Full text of "America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy The Truth About US Foreign Policy and Everything Else Blum, William"

See other formats

AMERICA'S

:ADLII:

XPORT

DEMOCRACY

THI- TRUTH ABOUT US FOREIGN POLICY
AND EVERYTHING ELSE

WILLIAM BLUM

ABOUT THIS BOOK

For over sixty-five years, the United States war machine has been
on automatic pilot. Since World War II we have been conditioned
to believe that America’s motives in ‘exporting’ democracy are
honorable, even noble. In this startling and provocative book,
William Blum, a leading dissident chronicler of US foreign policy
and the author of controversial bestseller Rogue State , argues
that nothing could be further from the truth. Moreover, unless
this fallacy is unlearned, and until people understand fully the
worldwide suffering American policy has caused, we will never
be able to stop the monster.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

William Blum is one of the United States’ leading non-mainstream
experts on American foreign policy. He left the State Department
in 1967 , abandoning his aspiration of becoming a Foreign Service
Officer because of his opposition to what the US was doing in
Vietnam. He then became a founder and editor of the Washington
Free Press , the first ‘alternative’ newspaper in the capital.

Blum has been a freelance journalist in the US, Europe, and
South America. His stay in Chile in 1972-73, writing about the
Allende government’s ‘socialist experiment,’ and then its tragic
overthrow in a CIA-designed coup, instilled in him a personal
involvement and an even more heightened interest in what his
government was doing in various corners of the world.

His book Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions
Since World War II has received international acclaim. Noam
Chomsky called it ‘Far and away the best book on the topic.’ In
1999 he was one of the recipients of Project Censored’s awards for
‘exemplary journalism.’ Blum is also the author of Rogue State:
A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower , West-Bloc Dissident:
A Cold War Memoir , and Freeing the World to Death: Essays on
the American Empire. His books have been translated into 27
foreign-language editions. In January 2006, a tape from Osama
bin Laden stated that ‘it would be useful’ for Americans to read
Rogue State , to gain a better understanding of their enemy.

Blum currently sends out a monthly Internet newsletter, the
Anti-Empire Report.

AMERICA’S

DEADLIEST

EXPORT

DEMOCRACY

THE TRUTH ABOUT US FOREIGN POLICY
AND EVERYTHING ELSE

WILLIAM BLUM

Zed Books

LONDON I NEWYORK

America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy - the Truth about
US Foreign Policy and Everything Else was first published in 2013

by Zed Books Ltd, 7 Cynthia Street, London ni 9JF,
uk and

Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, ny 10010, USA
www.zedbooks.co.uk

The right of William Blum to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

Typeset in Monotype Bulmer

by illuminati, Grosmont

Cover designed by Rogue Four Design

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of Zed Books Ltd.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data available

isbn 978 1 78032 447 0

io6

ii4

131

146

154

161

170

186

199

CONTENTS

Introduction

US foreign policy vs the world

Terrorism

Iraq

Afghanistan

Iran

George W. Bush
Condoleezza Rice

Human rights, civil liberties, and torture

WikiLeaks

Conspiracies

Yugoslavia

Libya

Latin America
Cuba

The Cold War and anti-communism

2 3

226

230

243

247

269

285

304

314

323

329

334

339

353

The 1960s

Ideology and society

Our precious environment

The problem with capitalism

The media

Barack Obama

Patriotism

Dissent and resistance in America
Religion

Laughing despite the empire
But what can we do?

Notes

Index

INTRODUCTION

The secret to understanding US foreign policy is that there is
no secret. Principally, one must come to the realization that the
United States strives to dominate the world, for which end it is
prepared to use any means necessary. Once one understands that,
much of the apparent confusion, contradiction, and ambiguity
surrounding Washington’s policies fades away. To express this
striving for dominance numerically, one can consider that since
the end of World War II the United States has

• endeavored to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments,
most of which were democratically elected; 1

• grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30
countries; 2

• attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders; 3

• dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries; 4

• attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in
20 countries. 5

The impact on world consciousness in recent decades of
tragedies such as in Rwanda and Darfur has been more conspicu-
ous than the American-caused tragedies because the first two each
took place in one area and within a relatively short period of time.
Despite the extensive documentation of the crimes of US foreign

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

policy, because of the very breadth of American interventions and
the time period of sixty-eight years it’s much more difficult for the
world to fully grasp what the United States has done.

In total: since 1945, the United States has carried out one or
more of the above-listed actions, on one or more occasions, in
seventy-one countries (more than one-third of the countries of
the world), 6 in the process of which the US has ended the lives
of several million people, condemned many millions more to a
life of agony and despair, and has been responsible for the torture
of countless thousands. US foreign policy has likely earned the
hatred of most of the people in the world who are able to more
or less follow current news events and are familiar with a bit of
modern history.

Oderint dum metuant - ‘Let them hate so long as they fear’
- was attributed to one or another prominent leader of Ancient
Rome.

Shortly before the US invasion of Iracj in March 2003, career
diplomat John Brady Kiesling, the political counselor at the US
embassy in Athens, resigned over the Iraq policy. ‘Has “oderint
dum metuant” really become our motto?’ he asked in his letter
of resignation, referring to the fact that more than one member
of the Bush administration had used the expression. 7

Following the US invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001,
former CIA director James Woolsey commented about worries
that storming Baghdad would incite Islamic radicals and broaden
support for them: ‘The silence of the Arab public in the wake
of America’s victories in Afghanistan,’ he said, proves that ‘only
fear will re-establish respect for the U.S. ... We need to read a
little bit of Machiavelli.’ (In the same talk, Woolsey further estab-
lished himself as a foreign policy pundit by stating: ‘There is so
much evidence with respect to [Saddam Hussein’s] development
of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles ... that I
consider this point beyond dispute.’ 8 )

INTRODUCTION

Speaking at the graduation ceremony of the US Military
Academy in West Point, New York, in June 2002, President
George W. Bush told America’s future warriors that they
were ‘in a conflict between good and evil’ and that ‘We must
uncover terror cells in 60 or more countries.’ 9 The United
States institutional war machine was, and remains, on automatic
pilot.

When the plans for a new office building for the military,
which came to be known as The Pentagon, were brought before
the Senate on August 14, 1941, Senator Arthur Vandenberg of
Michigan was puzzled. ‘Unless the war is to be permanent, why
must we have permanent accommodations for war facilities of
such size?’ he asked. ‘Or is the war to be permanent ?’ 10

‘Wars may be aberrant experiences in the lives of most human
individuals, but some nations are serial aggressors,’ observed
The Black Commentator in the fourth year of the war in Iraq.
‘American society is unique in having been formed almost
wholly by processes of aggression against external and internal
Others.’ 11

It can be said that American history is the history of an empire
in the making, since the first British settler killed the first native
American.

All countries, it is often argued, certainly all powerful
countries, have always acted belligerent and militaristic, so why
condemn the United States so much? But that is like arguing
that since one can find anti-Semitism in every country, why
condemn Nazi Germany? Obviously, it’s a question of magni-
tude. And the magnitude of US aggression puts it historically
into a league all by itself, just as the magnitude of the Nazis’
anti-Semitism did. Is the world supposed to uncritically accept
terribly aggressive behavior because it’s traditional and ex-
pected? Somehow normal? Is that any way to build a better
world?

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

Full spectrum dominance

A number of expressions and slogans associated with the Nazi
regime in Germany have become commonly known in English.

Sieg Heil! - Hail Victory!

Arbeit machtfrei - Work makes you free.

Denn heute gehort uns Deutschland und morgen die game Welt
- Today Germany, tomorrow the world.

Ich habe nur den Befehlen gehorcht! - I was only following orders!

But none perhaps is better known than Deutschland iiber alles
- Germany above all.

Thus I was taken aback, in June 2008, when I happened to
come across the website of the United States Air Force (www.
airforce.com) and saw on its first page a heading Above all’.
Lest you think that this referred simply and innocently to planes
high up in the air, this page linked to another site (www.airforce.
com/achangingworld) where Above all’ was repeated even more
prominently, with links to sites for Air Dominance,’ ‘Space
Dominance,’ and ‘Cyber Dominance,’ each of which in turn
repeated Above all’. These guys don’t kid around. They’re not
your father’s imperialist warmongers. If they’re planning for a
new ‘thousand-year Reich’, let’s hope that their fate is no better
than the original, which lasted twelve years.

Here’s how the gentlemen of the Pentagon have sounded in the
recent past on the subject of space.

We will engage terrestrial targets someday - ships, airplanes, land
targets - from space. . . . We’re going to fight in space. We’re going
to fight from space and we’re going to fight into space. (General
Joseph Ashy, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Space Command 12 )

With regard to space dominance, we have it, we like it, and we’re
going to keep it. (Keith R. Hall, Assistant Secretary of the Air

INTRODUCTION

Force for Space and Director of the National Reconnaissance
Office 13 )

During the early portion of the 2ist century, space power will also
evolve into a separate and equal medium of warfare. ... The emerg-
ing synergy of space superiority with land, sea, and air superiority
will lead to Full Spectrum Dominance. ... Development of ballistic
missile defenses using space systems and planning for precision
strikes from space offers a counter to the worldwide proliferation
ofWMD [weapons of mass destruction]. ... Space is a region with
increasing commercial, civil, international, and military interests
and investments. The threat to these vital systems is also increas-
ing. ... Control of Space is the ability to assure access to space,
freedom of operations within the space medium, and an ability
to deny others the use of space, if required. (‘United States Space
Command: Vision for 2020’ 14 )

Space represents a fundamentally new and better way to apply
military force. (US Strategic Command 15 )

Washington’s ambition for world domination is driven not by
the cause of a deeper democracy or freedom, a more just world,
ending poverty or violence, or a more liveable planet, but rather
by economics and ideology.

Michael Parenti has observed:

The objective is not just power for its own sake but power to insure
plutocratic control of the planet, power to privatize and deregulate
the economies of every nation in the world, to hoist upon the
backs of peoples everywhere - including the people of North
America - the blessings of an untrammeled ‘free market’ corporate
capitalism. The struggle is between those who believe that the
land, labor, capital, technology, and markets of the world should
be dedicated to maximizing capital accumulation for the few, and
those who believe that these things should be used for the com-
munal benefit and socio-economic development of the many. 16

It can thus be appreciated that to the American power elite
one of the longest lasting and most essential foreign policy goals

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

has been preventing the rise of any society that might serve as a
good example of an alternative to the capitalist model. This was
the essence of the Cold War. Cuba and Chile were two examples
of several such societies in the socialist camp which the United
States did its best to crush.

Like most powerful leaders - past, present, and future - Ameri-
can officials would have the rest of us believe that the policies
they pursue in their quest for domination are beneficial to their
own people and to most of the world, even if the blessings are not
always immediately recognizable. They would like nothing better
than to remake the world in America’s image, with free enterprise,
‘individualism’, something called ‘Judeo-Christian values,’ and
some other thing they call ‘democracy’ as core elements. Imagine,
then, what a shock September n, 2001 was to such men; not simply
the kind of shock that you and I experienced on that fateful day,
but the realization that someone had dared to ‘diss’ the empire, a
traumatic shock to the political nervous system. American leaders
assume that US moral authority is as absolute and unchallengeable
as US military power. ‘The messianism of American foreign policy
is a remarkable thing,’ a Russian parliamentary leader noted in
2006. ‘When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice speaks it seems
like Khrushchev reporting to the party congress: “The whole
world is marching triumphantly toward democracy but some
rogue states prefer to stay aside from that road, etc. etc.’” 17

And here is Michael Ledeen, former official of the Reagan
administration, later a fellow at one of the leading conservative
think tanks, American Enterprise Institute, speaking shortly
before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003:

If we just let our own vision of the world go forth, and we embrace
it entirely, and we don’t try to be clever and piece together clever
diplomatic solutions to this thing, but just wage a total war against
these tyrants, I think we will do very well, and our children will
sing great songs about us years from now. 18

INTRODUCTION

It was difficult to resist. A year after the dreadful invasion
and catastrophic occupation of Iraq I sent Mr Ledeen an email
reminding him of his words and saying simply: ‘I’d like to ask
you what songs your children are singing these days.’ I did not
expect a reply, and I was not disappointed.

Future president Theodore Roosevelt, who fought in Cuba
at the turn of the last century with the greatest of gung-ho-ism,
wrote: ‘It is for the good of the world that the English-speaking
race in all its branches should hold as much of the world’s surface
as possible.’ 19 One can End similar sentiments without end ex-
pressed by American leaders since the 1890s.

After the attacks of September 11, 2001 many Americans ac-
quired copies of the Quran in an attempt to understand why
Muslims could do what they did. One can wonder, following
the invasion of Iraq, whether Iraqis bought Christian bibles in
search of an explanation of why the most powerful nation on the
planet had laid such terrible waste to their ancient land, which
had done no harm to the United States.

Wars of aggression

Has there ever been an empire that didn’t tell itself and the rest
of the world that it was unlike all other empires, that its mission
was not to plunder and control but to enlighten and liberate?

The National Security Strategy , a paper issued by the White
House in September 2002, states:

In keeping with our heritage and principles, we do not use our
strength to press for unilateral advantage. We seek instead to create
a balance of power that favors human freedom: conditions in which
all nations and all societies can choose for themselves the rewards
and challenges of political and economic liberty.

However, later in the same report we read:

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

It is time to reaffirm the essential role of American military
strength. We must build and maintain our defenses beyond chal-
lenge ... Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential
adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpass-
ing, or equaling, the power of the United States. ... To forestall or
prevent ... hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if
necessary, act preemptively.

‘Preemptive war’ is what the post-World War II International
Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany, called a war of ag-
gression. ‘To initiate a war of aggression,’ the Tribunal declared,
‘therefore, is not only an international crime, it is the supreme
international crime differing only from other war crimes in that
it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.’

Six months after issuing the National Security Strategy, the
United States carried out an attack on Iraq which was less - that
is, worse - than ‘preemptive’: there was no provocation or threat
of any kind from Iraq. The 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii
by imperial Japan was certainly more preemptive. As Noam
Chomsky has pointed out:

Japanese leaders knew that B-17 Flying Fortresses were coming
off the Boeing production lines and were surely familiar with the
public discussions in the US explaining how they could be used to
incinerate Japan’s wooden cities in a war of extermination, flying
from Hawaiian and Philippine bases - ‘to burn out the industrial
heart of the Empire with fire-bombing attacks on the teeming
bamboo ant heaps,’ as retired Air Force General Chennault
recommended in 1940, a proposal that ‘simply delighted’ President
Roosevelt. Evidently, that is a far more powerful justification for
bombing military bases in US colonies than anything conjured
up by Bush-Blair and their associates in their execution of ‘pre-
emptive war.’ 20

The Germans insisted that their invasion of Poland in 1939
was justified on the grounds of preemption. Poland, declared
the Nazis, was planning to invade Germany. (Nineteenth-century

INTRODUCTION

German Chancellor Otto Bismarck once asserted that ‘Preventive
war is like committing suicide out of fear of death.’) In 2003,
and for some years subsequent, it was the United States saying
that Iraq was an ‘imminent threat’ to invade the US or Israel or
whoever, even when no weapons of mass destruction had been
located in Iraq and no plausible motive for Iraq invading the US
or Israel could be given. The claim of an imminent Iraqi threat
eventually fell of its own weight, as did many other prominent
Bush administration assertions about the US invasion.

Intelligence of the political kind

American leaders have convinced a majority of the American
people of the benevolence of their government’s foreign policy.
To have persuaded Americans of this, as well as a multitude of
other people throughout the world - in the face of overwhelming
evidence to the contrary, such as the lists of US international
atrocities shown above - must surely rank as one of the most out-
standing feats of propaganda and indoctrination in all of history.

I think there are all kinds of intelligence in this world: musical,
scientific, mathematical, artistic, academic, literary, mechanical,
and so on. Then there’s political intelligence, which I would
define as the ability to see through the nonsense which the
politicians - echoed by the media - of every society feed their
citizens from birth on to win elections and assure continuance
of the prevailing ideology. A lack in the American citizenry of
any of the other types of intelligence, though perhaps personally
detrimental, does not kill. A widespread deficiency of political
intelligence, however, can and does allow the taking of the lives of
large numbers of innocent people in places like Iraq, Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Yugoslavia, and Vietnam. The American people alone
have the power to influence the extremists who, in one election
after another, in the form of Democrats or Republicans, come

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

to power in the United States and proceed to create havoc and
disaster in one new killing held after another. But the citizenry
fall for US government propaganda justifying its military actions
as regularly and as naively as Charlie Brown falling for Lucy’s
football.

The American people are very much like the children of a
Mafia boss who do not know what their father does for a living,
and don’t want to know, but then wonder why someone just threw
a firebomb through the living room window.

Now why is that? Why are these people so easily indoctri-
nated? Are they just stupid? I think a better answer is that they
have certain preconceptions; consciously or unconsciously, they
have certain basic beliefs about the United States and its foreign
policy, and if you don’t deal with these basic beliefs you’ll be
talking to a stone wall. This book deals with many of these basic
beliefs, or what can also be called ‘myths.’

It is not at all uncommon to grow to adulthood in the United
States, even graduate from university, and not be seriously exposed
to opinions significantly contrary to these prevailing myths, and
know remarkably little about the exceptionally harmful foreign
policy of the government. It’s one thing for historical myths to
rise in the absence of a written history of a particular period,
such as our beliefs concerning the Neanderthals; but much odder
is the rise of such myths in the face of a plethora of historical
documents, testimony, films, and books.

To describe this on a personal level: I remember the good
warm feeling I used to have in my teens and twenties, and even
into my thirties, whenever I heard good ol’ Bob Hope dishing
out his good ol’ American humor to the good ol’ American GIs
scattered all over the world. I never gave any thought to what
the good ol’ American GIs were actually doing all over the world
in the Erst place. But would good ol’ Bob Hope be entertaining
good ol’ American GIs embarked on anything less than honorable

INTRODUCTION

missions? Could the nice, young, clean-cut American boys who
laughed so heartily at the same jokes I laughed at be up to no
good? Had our soldiers ever been up to no good? Nothing I had
been exposed to in any school or mainstream media had left me
with that impression in any firm or lasting way. The question had
never even crossed my mind.

On the infrequent occasion that I encountered someone of
dissident views they invariably did not have the facts at their
fingertips, did not argue their case very well, did not understand
- as I myself did not - my basic beliefs/myths. Their effect upon
my thinking was thus negligible. It took the horror of Vietnam
inescapably thrown into my face by protesters and their media
coverage to initiate a whole new personal intellectual process.
The process would likely have begun much sooner had I been
able to read something like the present book.

Democracy is a beautiful thing,

except that part about letting just any old jerk vote

The people can have anything they want.

The trouble is, they do not want anything.

At least they vote that way on election day.

(Eugene Debs, American socialist leader,
early twentieth century)

Why was the 2008 presidential primary vote for Ohio congress-
man Dennis Kucinich so small when anti-Iraq War sentiment in
the United States was apparently so high - millions had marched
against it on repeated occasions, with perhaps not a single dem-
onstration of any size in support - and Kucinich was easily the
leading anti-war candidate in the Democratic race, indeed the
only genuine one after former senator Mike Gravel withdrew?
Even allowing for his being cut out of several televized national
debates, Kucinich’s showing was remarkably poor. In Michigan,

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

on January 15, it was only Kucinich and Hillary Clinton running.
Clinton got 56 percent of the vote, the ‘uncommitted’ vote (for
candidates who had withdrawn but whose names were still on the
ballot) was 39 percent, and Kucinich received but 4 percent. And
Clinton had been the leading pro-war hawk of all the Democratic
candidates.

I think much of the answer may lie in the fact that the majority
of the American people - like the majority of people elsewhere
in the world - aren’t very sophisticated politically or intellectu-
ally, and many of them weren’t against the war for very cerebral
reasons. Their opposition often stemmed from things like the
large number of American soldiers who’d been killed or wounded;
the fact that the United States was not ‘winning’; that America’s
reputation in the world was being soiled; that numerous other
Americans had expressed their opposition to the war; that Presi-
dent Bush suffered from multiple verbal and character shortcom-
ings with television comedians regularly making fun of him - or
because of a number of other reasons we couldn’t even guess at.
There is not much that is particularly perceptive or learned in
this collection of reasons, no special insight into history, foreign
relations, international law, warfare, economics, propaganda,
or ideology - the basis of the ‘political intelligence’ referred to
above; which makes it so much easier for a politician who actually
supports a war to sell herself as an anti-war candidate when the
occasion calls for it.

Activists like myself are often scoffed at for saying the same
old things to the same old people; just spinning our wheels, we’re
told, ‘preaching to the choir’ or ‘preaching to the converted.’
But long experience as speaker, writer and activist in the area
of foreign policy tells me it just ain’t so. From the questions
and comments I regularly get from my audiences, via email and
in person, I can plainly see that there are numerous significant
information gaps and misconceptions in the choir’s thinking,

INTRODUCTION

often leaving them unable to see through the newest government
lie or propaganda trick; they’re unknowing or forgetful of what
happened in the past that illuminates the present; or knowing
the facts but unable to apply them at the appropriate moment;
vulnerable to being led astray by the next person who offers a
specious argument that opposes what they currently believe, or
think they believe. The choir needs to be frequently reminded
and enlightened.

As cynical as many Americans may think the members of the
choir are, the choir is frequently not cynical enough about the
power elite’s motivations. No matter how many times they’re lied
to, they still often underestimate the government’s capacity for
deceit, clinging to the belief that their leaders somehow mean
well. As long as people believe that their elected leaders are well
intentioned, the leaders can, and do, get away with murder. Liter-
ally. This belief is the most significant of the myths the present
book deals with.

One reason for confusion among the electorate is that the
two main parties, the Democrats and Republicans, while forever
throwing charges and counter-charges at each other, actually hold
indistinguishable views concerning foreign policy, a similarity
that is one of the subjects of this book. What is the poor voter
to make of all this?

Apropos of this we have the view of the American electoral
system from a foreigner, Cuban leader Raul Castro. He has
noted that the United States pits two identical parties against
one another, and joked that a choice between a Republican and
Democrat is like choosing between himself and his brother Fidel.
‘We could say in Cuba we have two parties: one led by Fidel
and one led by Raul, what would be the difference?’ he asked.
‘That’s the same thing that happens in the United States . . . both
are the same. Fidel is a little taller than me, he has a beard and
I don’t .’ 21

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

In sum, even when the hearts of the choir may be in the right
place, their heads still need working on, on a recurring basis.
And, in any event, very few people are actually born into the
choir; they achieve membership only after being preached to,
multiple times.

The essays that make up the book are a combination of new
and old; combined, updated, expanded, refined; many first ap-
peared in one form or another in my monthly online Anti-Empire
Report , or on my website, at various times during the past eight
years or so; where a date is specified at the beginning of the
piece it’s the date it was first written and should be read from
that vantage point (although in some cases it may differ markedly
from the original). This book is for current and, hopefully, future
members of the choir.

US FOREIGN POLICY VS THE WORLD

Mit der dummheit kampfen Getter selbst vergebens.

(‘With stupidity, even the gods struggle in vain.’ )

Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805)

I’m often told by readers of their encounters with Americans who
support the outrages of US foreign policy no matter what facts
are presented to them, no matter what arguments are made, no
matter how much the government’s statements are shown to be
false. My advice is to forget such people. They would support
the outrages even if the government came to their home, seized
their firstborn, and hauled them away screaming, so long as the
government assured them it was essential to fighting terrorism (or
communism), and threw in a little paean to democracy, freedom,
and God. My rough guess is that these people constitute no more
than 15 percent of the American population. I suggest that we
concentrate on the rest, who are reachable.

Inasmuch as I cannot see violent revolution succeeding in the
United States (something deep inside tells me that we couldn’t
quite match the government’s firepower, not to mention its
viciousness), I can offer no solution to stopping the imperial
beast other than: educate yourself and as many others as you
can, increasing the number of those in the opposition until it

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

reaches a critical mass, at which point. . . I can’t predict the form
the explosion will take or what might be the trigger.

As to the education, I like to emphasize certain points that
try to deal with the underlying intellectual misconceptions and
emotional ‘hang-ups’ I think Americans have which stand in
the way of their seeing through the propaganda. Briefly, here
are some of the main points (explained in more detail in later
chapters):

1. Far and away the most important lesson to impart to the Ameri-
can mind and soul: regardless of our lifetime of education to
the contrary, US foreign policy does not ‘mean well.’ The facts
presented in this book should leave no doubt of that thesis, but
the progressive political activist must be conscious of it at all
times. I like to ask the American True Believers: what would
the United States have to do in its foreign policy to cause you
to stop supporting it?

2. The United States is not concerned with this thing called
‘democracy’, no matter how many times every American
president uses the word each time he opens his mouth. As
noted in the Introduction, since 1945 the US has attempted to
overthrow more than fifty governments, most of which were
democratically elected, and grossly interfered in democratic
elections in at least thirty countries. The question is: what do
American leaders mean by ‘democracy’? The last thing they
have in mind is any kind of economic democracy - the closing
of the gap between the desperate poor and those for whom
too much is not enough. The first thing they have in mind is
making sure the target country has the political, financial, and
legal mechanisms in place to make it hospitable to corporate
globalization.

3. Anti-American terrorists are not motivated by hatred or envy
of freedom or democracy, or by American wealth, secular

US FOREIGN POLICY VS THE WORLD

government, or culture, as we’ve been told many times. They
are motivated by decades of awful things done to their home-
lands by US foreign policy. It works the same way all over
the world. In the period of the 1950s to the 1980s in Latin
America, in response to a long string of harmful American
policies, there were countless acts of terrorism against US
diplomatic and military targets as well as the offices of US
corporations. The US bombing, invasion, occupation, and
torture in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in recent years
have created thousands of new anti-American terrorists. We’ll
be hearing from them for a very long time.

4. The United States is not actually against terrorism per se,
only those terrorists who are not allies of the empire. There
is a lengthy and infamous history of Washington’s support for
numerous anti-Castro terrorists, even when their terrorist acts
were committed in the United States. At this moment, Luis
Posada Carriles remains protected by the US government,
though he masterminded the blowing up of a Cuban airplane
that killed 73 people. He’s but one of hundreds of anti-Castro
terrorists who’ve been given haven in the United States over
the years. The United States has also provided close support
to terrorists, or fought on the same side as Islamic jihadists, in
Kosovo, Bosnia, Iran, Libya, and Syria, including those with
known connections to al-Qaeda, to further foreign policy goals
more important than fighting terrorism.

5. Iraq was not any kind of a threat to the United States. Of the
never-ending lies concerning Iraq, this is the most insidious,
the necessary foundation for all the other lies.

6. There was never any such animal as the International Com-
munist Conspiracy. There were, as there still are, people living
in misery, rising up in protest against their condition, against
an oppressive government, a government usually supported by
the United States.

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

That oh-so-precious world where words have no meaning

In December 1989, two days after bombing and invading the
defenseless population of Panama, killing as many as a few thou-
sand totally innocent people, guilty of no harm to any American,
President George H.W. Bush declared that his ‘heart goes out to
the families of those who have died in Panama.’ 1 When a reporter
asked him, ‘Was it really worth it to send people to their death
for this? To get [Panamanian leader Manuel] Noriega?’ Bush
replied: ‘Every human life is precious, and yet I have to answer,
yes, it has been worth it.’ 2

A year later, preparing for his next worthwhile mass murder,
the first US invasion of Iraq, Bush Sr. said: ‘People say to me:
“How many lives? How many lives can you expend?” Each one
is precious.’ 3

At the end of 2006, with Bush’s son now president, White
House spokesman Scott Stanzel, commenting about American
deaths reaching 3,000 in the second Iraq War, said that Bush
‘believes that every life is precious and grieves for each one that
is lost.’ 4 In February 2008, with American deaths about to reach
4,000, and Iraqi deaths as many as a million or more, George
W. Bush asserted:

When we lift our hearts to God, we’re all equal in his sight.

We’re all equally precious. ... In prayer we grow in mercy and
compassion. . . . When we answer God’s call to love a neighbor as
ourselves, we enter into a deeper friendship with our fellow man. 5

Inspired by such noble - dare I say precious? - talk from its
leaders, the American military machine likes to hire like-minded
warriors. Here is Erik Prince, founder of the military contractor
Blackwater, whose employees in Iraq killed people like others
flick away a mosquito, in testimony before Congress: ‘Every life,
whether American or Iraqi, is precious.’ 6

While his killing of thousands of Iraqis was proceeding merrily

US FOREIGN POLICY VS THE WORLD

along in 2003, the second President George Bush was moved to
say: ‘We believe in the value and dignity of every human life.’ 7

Both father and son are on record expressing their deep concern
for God and prayer both before and during their mass slaughters.
‘I trust God speaks through me,’ said Bush the younger in 2004.
‘Without that, I couldn’t do my job.’ 8

After his devastation of Iraq and its people, Bush the elder said:
‘I think that, like a lot of others who had positions of responsibil-
ity in sending someone else’s kids to war, we realize that in prayer
what mattered is how it might have seemed to God.’ 9

God, one can surmise, might have asked George Bush, father
and son, about the kids of Iraq. And the adults. And, in a testy,
rather ungodlike manner, might have snapped: ‘So stop wasting
all the precious lives already!’

In the now-famous exchange on television in 1996 between Mad-
eleine Albright and reporter Lesley Stahl, the latter was speaking
of US sanctions against Iraq, and asked the then-US ambassador
to the UN, and Secretary of State-to-be: ‘We have heard that a half
million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died
in Hiroshima. And... and you know, is the price worth it?’

Albright replied: ‘I think this is a very hard choice, but the
price... we think the price is worth it.’ 10

Ten years later, Condoleezza Rice, continuing the fine tradition
of female Secretaries of State and the equally noble heritage of the
Bush family, declared that the current horror in Iraq was ‘worth
the investment’ in American lives and dollars. 11

The worldwide eternal belief that American foreign policy
has a good side that can be appealed to

On April 6, 2011, in the midst of NATO/US bombing of his
country, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi wrote a letter to Presi-
dent Barack Obama in which he said:

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

We have been hurt more morally than physically because of what
had happened against us in both deeds and words by you. Despite
all this you will always remain our son whatever happened . . . Our
dear son, Excellency, Baraka Hussein Abu Oubama, your inter-
vention in the name of the U.S.A. is a must, so that Nato would
withdraw finally from the Libyan affair . 12

Gaddafi’s hope that writing to Obama could move the American
president to put an end to the bombing of Libya turned out, as
we know, to be unrealistic.

Before the American invasion in March 2003, Iraq tried to
negotiate a peace deal with the United States. Iraqi officials,
including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, wanted
Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass
destruction and offered to allow American troops and experts
to conduct a search; they also offered full support for any US
plan in the Arab-Israeli peace process, and to hand over a man
accused of being involved in the World Trade Center bombing
in 1993. If this is about oil, they added, they would also talk
about US oil concessions. 13 Washington’s reply was its ‘Shock
and Awe’ bombing.

In 2002, before the coup in Venezuela that briefly ousted Presi-
dent Hugo Chavez, some of the plotters went to Washington to
get a green light from the Bush administration. Chavez learned of
this visit and was so distressed by it that he sent officials from his
government to plead his own case in Washington. The success of
this endeavor can be judged by the fact that the coup took place
very shortly thereafter. 14

In 1994, it was reported that the spokesperson of the Zapatista
rebels in Mexico, Subcomandante Marcos, said that ‘he expects
the United States to support the Zapatistas once US intelligence
agencies are convinced the movement is not influenced by Cubans
or Russians.’ ‘Finally,’ Marcos said, ‘they are going to conclude
that this is a Mexican problem, with just and true causes.’ 15 Yet

US FOREIGN POLICY VS THE WORLD

for many years, before and after these remarks, the United States
provided the Mexican military with all the tools and training
needed to crush the Zapatistas.

Maurice Bishop of Grenada in 1983, Cheddijagan of British
Guiana in 1961, the Guatemalan foreign minister in 1954, all made
their appeals to Washington to be left in peace. 11 ’ The governments
of all three countries were overthrown by the United States.

In 1945 and 1946, Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, a genuine
admirer of America and the Declaration of Independence, wrote
at least eight letters to President Harry Truman and the State
Department asking for America’s help in winning Vietnamese
independence from the French. He wrote that world peace was
being endangered by French efforts to reconquer Indochina and
he requested that ‘the four powers’ (US, USSR, China, and Great
Britain) intervene in order to mediate a fair settlement and bring
the Indochinese issue before the United Nations. 17 Ho Chi Minh
received no reply. He was, after all, some kind of communist.

The myth of the good war

The reason so many Americans support US war crimes is that
they’re convinced that no matter how bad things may look, the
government means well. And one of the foundation stones for this
edifice of patriotic faith is the Second World War, a historical
saga that all Americans are taught about from childhood on. We
all know what its real name is: ‘The Good War.’

Which leads me to recommend a book, The Myth of the Good
War , by Jacques Pauwels, published in 2002. It’s very well done,
well argued and documented, an easy read. I particularly like
the sections dealing with the closing months of the European
campaign, during which the United States and Great Britain
contemplated stabbing their Soviet ally in the back with man-
euvers like a separate peace with Germany, using German troops

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

to fight the Russians, and sabotaging legal attempts by various
Communist parties and other elements of the European left to
share in (highly earned) political power after the war; the most
dramatic example of this being the US taking the side of the
Greek neo-fascists against the Greek left, who had fought the
Nazis courageously. Stalin learned enough about these schemes
to at least partially explain his postwar suspicious manner toward
his ‘allies.’ In the West we called it ‘paranoia.’ 18

The enduring mystique of the Marshall Plan

Amidst all the political upheavals in North Africa and the Middle
East in 2011 the name ‘Marshall Plan’ kept being repeated by
political figures and media around the world as the key to rebuild-
ing the economies of those societies to complement the supposed
political advances. But caveat emptor ; let the buyer beware.

During my years of writing and speaking about the harm and
injustice inflicted upon the world by unending United States
interventions, I’ve often been met with resentment from those
who accuse me of chronicling only the negative side of US foreign
policy and ignoring the many positive sides. When I ask the
person to give me some examples of what s/he thinks show the
virtuous face of America’s dealings with the world in modern
times, one of the things mentioned - almost without exception
- is the Marshall Plan. This is usually described along the lines
of: ‘After World War II, the United States unselfishly built up
Europe economically, including its wartime enemies, and allowed
them to compete with the US.’ Even those today who are very
cynical about US foreign policy, who are quick to question the
White House’s motives in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, have
little problem in accepting this picture of an altruistic America
of the period 1948-1952. But let us have a closer look at the
Marshall Plan.

US FOREIGN POLICY VS THE WORLD

After World War II, the United States, triumphant abroad and
undamaged at home, saw a door wide open for world supremacy.
Only the thing called ‘communism’ stood in the way, politically,
militarily, economically, and ideologically. Thus it was that the
entire US foreign policy establishment was mobilized to confront
this ‘enemy’, and the Marshall Plan was an integral part of this
campaign. How could it be otherwise? Anti-communism had
been the principal pillar of US foreign policy from the Russian
Revolution up to World War II, pausing for the war until the
closing months of the Pacific campaign when Washington put
challenging communism ahead of fighting the Japanese. Even the
dropping of the atom bomb on Japan - when the Japanese had
already been defeated - can be seen as more a warning to the
Soviets than a military action against the Japanese. 19

After the war, anti-communism continued as the leitmotif of
American foreign policy as naturally as if World War II and the
alliance with the Soviet Union had not happened. Along with
the CIA, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the Council on
Foreign Relations, certain corporations, and a few other private
institutions, the Marshall Plan was one more arrow in the quiver of
those striving to remake Europe to suit Washington’s desires:

1. Spreading the capitalist gospel - to counter strong postwar
tendencies toward socialism.

2. Opening markets to provide new customers for US corpora-
tions - a major reason for helping to rebuild the European
economies; e.g. a billion dollars (at twenty- first-century prices)
of tobacco, spurred by US tobacco interests.

3. Pushing for the creation of the Common Market (the future
European Union) and NATO as integral parts of the West
European bulwark against the alleged Soviet threat.

4. Suppressing the left all over Western Europe, most notably
sabotaging the Communist parties in France and Italy in their

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

bids for legal, non-violent, electoral victory. Marshall Plan
funds were secretly siphoned off to finance this endeavor,
and the promise of aid to a country, or the threat of its cutoff,
was used as a bullying club; indeed, France and Italy would
certainly have been exempted from receiving aid if they had
not gone along with the plots to exclude the Communists from
any kind of influential role.

The CIA also skimmed large amounts of Marshall Plan funds
to covertly maintain cultural institutions, journalists, and pub-
lishers, at home and abroad, for the omnipresent and heated
propaganda of the Cold War; the selling of the Marshall Plan
to the American public and elsewhere was entwined with fight-
ing ‘the red menace’. Moreover, in their covert operations, CIA
personnel at times used the Marshall Plan as cover, and one of the
Plan’s chief architects, Richard Bissell, then moved to the CIA,
stopping off briefly at the Ford Foundation, a long-time conduit
for CIA covert funds. ’Twas one big happy, scheming family.

The Marshall Plan imposed all kinds of restrictions on the
recipient countries, all manner of economic and fiscal criteria
which had to be met, designed for a wide-open return to free
enterprise. The US had the right not only to control how Marshall
Plan dollars were spent, but also to approve the expenditure of
an equivalent amount of the local currency, giving Washington
substantial power over the internal plans and programs of the
European states; welfare programs for the needy survivors of
the war were looked upon with disfavor by the United States;
even rationing smelled too much like socialism and had to go
or be scaled down; nationalization of industry was even more
vehemently opposed by Washington.

The great bulk of Marshall Plan funds returned to the United
States, or never left, being paid directly to American corporations
to purchase American goods. The US Agency for International

US FOREIGN POLICY VS THE WORLD

Development (AID) stated in 1999: ‘The principal beneficiary
of America’s foreign assistance programs has always been the
United States.’ 20

The program could be seen as more a joint business operation
between governments than an American ‘handout’; often it was
a business arrangement between American and European ruling
classes, many of the latter fresh from their service to the Third
Reich, some of the former as well; or it was an arrangement
between congressmen and their favorite corporations to export
certain commodities, including a lot of military goods. Thus
did the Marshall Plan help lay the foundation for the military-
industrial complex as a permanent feature of American life.

It is very difficult to find, or put together, a clear, credible
description of how the Marshall Plan played a pivotal or indis-
pensable role in the recovery in each of the sixteen recipient
nations. The opposing view, at least as clear, is that the Europeans
- highly educated, skilled and experienced - could have recovered
from the war on their own without an extensive master plan
and aid program from abroad, and indeed had already made
significant strides in this direction before the Plan’s funds began
flowing. Marshall Plan funds were not directed primarily toward
the urgently needed feeding of individuals or rebuilding their
homes, schools, or factories, but at strengthening the economic
superstructure, particularly the iron, steel and power industries.
The period was in fact marked by deflationary policies, unem-
ployment, and recession. The one unambiguous outcome was the
full restoration of the propertied classes. 21

Why do they hate us? Part 1

Here is President Dwight Eisenhower in a March 1953 National
Security Council Meeting: Why can’t we ‘get some of the people in
these downtrodden countries to like us instead of hating us?’ 22

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

The United States is still wondering, and is no closer to an
understanding than Good OF Ike was sixty years ago. The
American people and their leaders appear to still believe what
Frances Fitzgerald observed in her study of American history
textbooks:

According to these books, the United States had been a kind of
Salvation Army to the rest of the world: throughout history, it had
done little but dispense benefits to poor, ignorant, and diseased
countries. ... the United States always acted in a disinterested
fashion, always from the highest of motives; it gave, never took . 23

I almost feel sorry for the American troops scattered round the
world on military bases situated on other people’s land. They’re
‘can-do’ Americans, accustomed to getting their way, accustomed
to thinking of themselves as the best, and they’re frustrated as
hell, unable to figure out ‘why they hate us’, why we can’t win
them over, why we can’t at least wipe them out. Don’t they want
freedom and democracy? At one time or another the can-do boys
tried writing a comprehensive set of laws and regulations, even
a constitution, for Iraq; setting up mini-bases in neighborhoods;
building walls to block off areas; training and arming ‘former’
Sunni insurgents to fight Shias and al-Qaeda; enlisting Shias to
help fight, against whomever; leaving weapons or bomb-making
material in public view to see who picks it up, then pouncing on
them; futuristic vehicles and machines and electronic devices to
destroy roadside bombs; setting up their own Arabic-language
media, censoring other media; classes for detainees on anger
control, an oath of peace, and the sacredness of life and property;
regularly revising the official reason the United States was in the
country in the first place. . . one new tactic after another, and when
all else fails call it a ‘success’ and give it a nice inspiring action
name, like ‘surge’... and nothing helps. They’re can-do Ameri-
cans, using good ol’ American know-how and Madison Avenue

US FOREIGN POLICY VS THE WORLD

savvy, sales campaigns, public relations, advertising, selling the
US brand, just like they do it back home; employing psychologists
and anthropologists... and nothing helps. And how can it if the
product you’re selling is toxic, inherently, from birth, if you’re
totally ruining your customers’ lives, with no regard for any kind
of law or morality. They’re can-do Americans, accustomed to
playing by the rules - theirs; and they’re frustrated as hell.

Here now the Google Cavalry rides up on its silver horse.
Through its think tank (or ‘think/do tank’), Google Ideas, the
company paid for eighty former Muslim extremists, neo-Nazis,
US gang members and other former radicals to gather in Dublin
in June, 2011 (‘Summit Against Violent Extremism’, or SAVE)
to explore how technology can play a role in ‘de-radicalization’
efforts around the globe. Now is that not Can-do ambitious?

The ‘formers,’ as they have been dubbed by Google, were
surrounded by 120 thinkers, activists, philanthropists, and busi-
ness leaders. The goal was to dissect the question of what draws
some people, particularly young people, to extremist movements
and why some of them leave. The person in charge of this project
was Jared Cohen, who spent four years on the State Department’s
Policy Planning staff, and was soon to be an adjunct fellow at
the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), focusing on counter-
radicalization, innovation, technology, and statecraft . 24

So. . . it’s ‘violent extremism’ that’s the big mystery, the target for
all these intellectuals to figure out. Why does violent extremism
attract so many young people all over the world? Or, of more
importance probably to the State Department and CFR types,
why do violent extremists single out the United States as their
target of choice?

Readers of my rants do not need to be enlightened as to the
latter question. There is simply an abundance of terrible things
US foreign policy has done in every corner of the world. As to
what attracts young people to violent extremism, consider this:

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

what makes a million young Americans willing to travel to places
like Afghanistan and Iraq to risk life and limb to kill other young
people, who have never done them any harm, and to commit
unspeakable atrocities and tortures?

Is this not extreme behavior? Can these young Americans
not be called ‘extremists’ or ‘radicals’? Are they not violent? Do
the Google experts understand their behavior? If not, how will
they ever understand the foreign Muslim extremists? Are the
experts prepared to examine the underlying phenomenon - the
deep-seated belief in ‘American exceptionalism’ drilled into every
cell and nerve ganglion of American consciousness from pre-
kindergarten on? Do the esteemed experts, then, have to wonder
about those who believe in ‘Muslim exceptionalism’?

In 2009, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s second-in-command,
declared: ‘He [Obama] is trying to say: “Do not hate us ... but
we will continue to kill you”.’ 25

Why do they hate us? Part 2

For some time in 2005 the Pentagon was engaged in fighting
against the American Civil Liberties Union, members of Con-
gress, and others who were pushing for the release of new photos
and videos of prisoner ‘abuse’ (otherwise known as ‘torture’) in
the American gulag. The Pentagon was blocking release of these
materials because, they claimed, it would inflame anti-American
feelings and inspire terrorist acts abroad. This clearly implied
that so-called anti-Americans come to their views as a result
of American actions or behavior. Yet, the official position of
the Bush administration, repeated numerous times and never
rescinded by the Obama administration, is that the motivation
behind anti-American terrorism has nothing to do with anything
the United States does abroad, or has ever done, but has to do
with personal defects of the terrorists. 26

US FOREIGN POLICY VS THE WORLD

In a similar vein, Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy
Karen Hughes toured the Middle East in 2005 for the stated purpose
of correcting the ‘mistaken’ impressions people have of the United
States, which, she would have the world believe, are the root
cause of anti-American hatred and terrorism; it was all a matter of
misunderstanding, image, and public relations. At her confirmation
hearing in July, Hughes said: ‘The mission of public diplomacy is
to engage, inform, and help others understand our policies, actions
and values.’ 27 But what if the problem is that the Muslim world, like
the rest of the world, understands America only too well?

Predictably, this confidante of President Bush (this being her
only qualification for the position) uttered one inanity after another
on her tour. Here she is in Turkey: ‘to preserve the peace, some-
times my country believes war is necessary,’ and declaring that
women are faring much better in Iraq than they did under Saddam
Hussein. 28 When her remarks were angrily challenged by Turkish
women in the audience, Hughes replied: ‘Obviously we have a
public relations challenge here ... as we do in different places
throughout the world.’ 29 Right, Karen, it’s all just PR, nothing of
any substance to worry your banality-filled little head about.

The Arab News, a leading English-language Middle East daily,
summed up Hughes’s performance thus: ‘Painfully clueless.’ 30

The Washington Post reported that Hughes’s ‘audiences, es-
pecially in Egypt, often consisted of elites with long ties to the
United States, but many people she spoke with said the core
reason for the poor U.S. image remained U.S. policies, not how
those policies were marketed or presented.’ 31 Might she and her
boss learn anything from this? Nah.

Why do they hate us? Part 3

The Pentagon awarded three contracts in June 2005, worth up to
$300 million, to companies it hoped would inject more creativity

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

into US psychological operations to improve foreign public
opinion about the United States, particularly their opinion of the
American military. ‘We would like to be able to use cutting-edge
types of media,’ said Col. James A. Treadwell, director of the
Joint Psychological Operations Support Element.

Dan Kuehl, a specialist in information warfare at the National
Defense University, added: ‘There are a billion-plus Muslims that
are undecided. How do we move them over to being more support-
ive of us? If we can do that, we can make progress and improve
security.’ 32 And so it goes. And so it has gone since September
11, 2001. The world’s only superpower has felt misunderstood,
unloved. ‘How do I respond when I see that in some Islamic
countries there is vitriolic hatred for America?’ asked George W.
a month after 9/11. ‘I’ll tell you how I respond: I’m amazed. I’m
amazed that there’s such misunderstanding of what our country
is about that people would hate us. I am - like most Americans, I
just can’t believe it because I know how good we are.’ 33

Psychological operations, information warfare, cutting-edge
media ... surely there’s a high-tech solution. But again - what
if it’s not a misunderstanding? What if the people of the world
simply don’t believe that we’re so good? What if they - in their
foreign ignorance and A 1 Jazeera brainwashing - have come to
the bizarre conclusion that saturation bombing, invasion, occupa-
tion, destruction of homes, torture, depleted uranium, killing a
hundred thousand, and daily humiliation of men, women and
children do not indicate good intentions?

Why can’t the US government talk about why they hate us?

Following an act of terrorism, we rarely receive from our officials
and media even a slightly serious discussion of the terrorists’
motivation. Was there any kind of deep-seated grievance or re-
sentment with anything or anyone American being expressed?

US FOREIGN POLICY VS THE WORLD

Any perceived wrong they wished to make right? Anything they
sought to obtain revenge for? And why is the United States the
most common target of terrorists?

But such questions are virtually forbidden in the mainstream
world. At a White House press briefing in January 2010, Assistant
to the President for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security,
John Brennan, was asked a question by veteran reporter Helen
Thomas concerning an attempt by ‘the underwear bomber,’ Umar
Farouk Abdulmutallab, to blow up a US airliner on Christmas
Day 2009:

thomas: What is really lacking always for us is you don’t give the
motivation of why they want to do us harm. . . . What is the motiva-
tion? We never hear what you find out or why.

brennan: A1 Qaeda is an organization that is dedicated to murder
and wanton slaughter of innocents . . . [They] attract individuals
like Mr. Abdulmutallab and use them for these types of attacks. He
was motivated by a sense of religious sort of drive. Unfortunately,
al Qaeda has perverted Islam, and has corrupted the concept of
Islam, so that [they’re] able to attract these individuals. But al
Qaeda has the agenda of destruction and death.

thomas: And you’re saying it’s because of religion?

brennan: I’m saying it’s because of an al Qaeda organization that
uses the banner of religion in a very perverse and corrupt way.

thomas: Why?

brennan: I think ... this is a long issue, but al Qaeda is just
determined to carry out attacks here against the homeland.

thomas: But you haven’t explained why . 34

You’ve got to be carefully taught

It needs to be repeated: the leading myth of US foreign policy, the
one which entraps more Americans than any other, is the belief
that the United States, in its foreign policy, means well. American

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

leaders may make mistakes, they may blunder, they may lie, they
may even on the odd occasion cause more harm than good, but
they do mean well. Their intentions are honorable, if not divinely
inspired. Of that most Americans are certain. And as long as
a person clings to that belief, it’s rather unlikely that s/he will
become seriously doubtful and critical of the official stories.

It takes a lot of repetition while an American is growing up to
inculcate this message into their young consciousness, and lots
more repetition later on. The education of an American true-
believer is ongoing, continuous ... schoolbooks, comicbooks,
church sermons, Hollywood films, all forms of media, all the
time; hardened into historical concrete. Here is Michael Mullen,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest military officer
in the United States, writing in the Washington Post in 2009:

We in the U.S. military are likewise held to a high standard.

Like the early Romans, we are expected to do the right thing,
and when we don’t, to make it right again . . . And it’s why each
civilian casualty for which we are even remotely responsible sets
back our efforts to gain the confidence of the Afghan people
months, if not years. It doesn’t matter how hard we try to avoid
hurting the innocent, and we do try very hard. It doesn’t matter
how proportional the force we deploy, how precisely we strike.

It doesn’t even matter if the enemy hides behind civilians. What
matters are the death and destruction that result and the expecta-
tion that we could have avoided it ... Lose the people’s trust, and
we lose the war ... I see this sort of trust being fostered by our
troops all over the world. They are building schools, roads, wells,
hospitals and power stations. They work every day to build the
sort of infrastructure that enables local governments to stand on
their own. But mostly, even when they are going after the enemy,
they are building friendships. They are building trust. And they
are doing it in superb fashion . 35

How many young service members have heard such a talk
from Mullen or other officers? How many of them have not been

US FOREIGN POLICY VS THE WORLD

impressed, even choked up? How many Americans reading or
hearing such stirring words have not had a lifetime of reinforce-
ment reinforced once again? How many could even imagine that
Admiral Mullen is spouting a bunch of crap? The great majority of
Americans will swallow it. When Mullen declares ‘What matters
are the death and destruction that result and the expectation that
we could have avoided it,’ he’s implying that there was no way to
avoid it. But of course it could have been easily avoided by simply
not dropping any bombs on the Afghan people.

You tell the true believers that the truth is virtually the exact
opposite of what Mullen has said and they look at you as if you
just got off the Number 36 bus from Mars. Bill Clinton bombed
Yugoslavia for seventy-eight days and nights in a row. His mili-
tary and political policies destroyed one of the most progressive
countries in Europe. And he called it ‘humanitarian intervention.’
It’s still regarded by almost all Americans, including many, if not
most, ‘progressives,’ as just that. Propaganda is to a democracy
what violence is to a dictatorship.

God bless America. And its bombs

When they bombed Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, El Salvador
and Nicaragua I said nothing because I wasn’t a communist.

When they bombed China, Guatemala, Indonesia, Cuba, and the
Congo I said nothing because I didn’t know about it.

When they bombed Lebanon and Grenada I said nothing because
I didn’t understand it.

When they bombed Panama I said nothing because I wasn’t a drug
dealer.

When they bombed Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and
Yemen I said nothing because I wasn’t a terrorist.

When they bombed Yugoslavia and Libya for ‘humanitarian’
reasons I said nothing because it sounded so honorable.

Then they bombed my bouse and there was no one left to speak
out for me. But it didn’t really matter. I was dead . 36

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

It has become a commonplace to accuse the United States of
choosing as its bombing targets only people of color, those of the
Third World, or Muslims. But it must be remembered that one of
the most sustained and ferocious American bombing campaigns
of modern times - seventy-eight consecutive days - was carried
out against the people of the former Yugoslavia: white, European,
Christians. The United States is an equal-opportunity bomber.
The only qualifications for a country to become a target are: (a)
it poses an obstacle - could be anything - to a particular desire of
the American Empire; (b) it is virtually defenseless against aerial
attack; (c) it does not possess nuclear weapons.

A Mecca of hypocrisy, a Vatican of double standards

On February 21, 2008, following a demonstration against the
United States’ role in Kosovo’s declaration of independence,
rioters in the Serbian capital of Belgrade broke into the US
embassy and set fire to an office. The attack was called ‘intoler-
able’ by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, 37 and the American
ambassador to the United Nations, Zalrnay Khalilzad, said he
would ask the UN Security Council to issue a unanimous state-
ment ‘expressing the council’s outrage, condemning the attack,
and also reminding the Serbian government of its responsibility
to protect diplomatic facilities.’ 38

This is of course standard language for such situations. But
what the media and American officials didn’t remind us is that
in May 1999, during the US/NATO bombing of Serbia, then part
of Yugoslavia, the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was hit by a US
missile, causing considerable damage and killing three embassy
employees. The official Washington story on this - then, and
still now - is that it was a mistake. But this is almost certainly a
lie. According to a joint investigation by the Observer of London
and Politiken newspaper in Denmark, the embassy was bombed

US FOREIGN POLICY VS THE WORLD

because it was being used to transmit electronic communications
for the Yugoslav army after the army’s regular system was made
inoperable by the bombing. The Observer was told by ‘senior
military and intelligence sources in Europe and the US’ that
the embassy bombing was deliberate, which was ‘confirmed in
detail by three other Nato officers - a flight controller operating
in Naples, an intelligence officer monitoring Yugoslav radio traffic
from Macedonia and a senior [NATO] headquarters officer in
Brussels.’ 39

Moreover, the New York Times reported at the time that the
bombing had destroyed the embassy’s intelligence-gathering
nerve center, and two of the three Chinese killed were intel-
ligence officers. ‘The highly sensitive nature of the parts of the
embassy that were bombed suggests why the Chinese . . . insist the
bombing was no accident. . . . “That’s exactly why they don’t buy
our explanation”,’ said a Pentagon official. 40 There were several
other good reasons not to buy the story as well. 41

In April 1986, after the French government refused the use of
its airspace to US warplanes headed for a bombing raid on Libya,
the planes were forced to take another, longer route. When they
reached Libya they bombed so close to the French embassy that
the building was damaged and all communication links knocked
out. 42

And in April 2003, the US ambassador to Russia was sum-
moned to the Russian Foreign Ministry due to the fact that the
residential quarter of Baghdad where the Russian embassy was
located was bombed several times by the United States during its
invasion of Iraq. 43 There had been reports that Saddam Hussein
was hiding in the embassy. 44

So, we can perhaps chalk up the State Department’s affirma-
tions about the inviolability of embassies as yet another example
of US foreign policy hypocrisy. But I think that there is some
satisfaction in that American foreign policy officials, as morally

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

damaged as they must be, are not all so unconscious that they
don’t know they’re swimming in a sea of hypocrisy. The Los
Angeles Times reported in 2004 that

The State Department plans to delay the release of a human rights
report that was due out today, partly because of sensitivities over
the prison abuse scandal in Iraq, U.S. officials said. One official ...
said the release of the report, which describes actions taken by the
U.S. government to encourage respect for human rights by other
nations, could ‘make us look hypocritical.’ 45

And in 2007 the Washington Post informed us that Chester
Crocker, former Assistant Secretary of State and current member
of the State Department’s Advisory Committee on Democracy
Promotion, noted that ‘we have to be able to cope with the
argument that the U.S. is inconsistent and hypocritical in its
promotion of democracy around the world. That may be true.’ 46

The empire’s deep dark secret

‘In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the
president to again send a big American land army into Asia or
into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined,’
declared Obama’s Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, on Febru-
ary 25, 2011.

Remarkable. Every one of the many wars the United States has
engaged in since the end of World War II has been presented to
the American people, explicitly or implicitly, as a war of necessity,
not a war of choice; a war urgently needed to protect American
citizens, American allies, vital American ‘interests,’ freedom
and/or democracy, or kill dangerous anti-American terrorists
and various other bad guys. Here is President Obama speaking
of Afghanistan: ‘But we must never forget this is not a war of
choice. This is a war of necessity.’ 47

US FOREIGN POLICY VS THE WORLD

This being the case, how can a future administration say it will
not go to war if any of these noble causes is seriously threatened?
The answer, of course, is that these noble causes are irrelevant.
The United States goes to war where and when it wants, and if a
noble cause is not self-evident, the government, with indispensable
help from the American media, will manufacture one. Secretary
Gates is now admitting that there is a choice involved. Well, Bob,
thanks for telling us. You were Bush’s Secretary of Defense as well,
and before that spent twenty-six years in the CIA and the National
Security Council. You sure know how to keep a secret.

Reforming the Indonesian military, for forty years

(June 13, 2005)

On May 25, 2005 President Bush stated that it makes sense for
the United States to maintain close military ties with Indonesia,
despite the objections of human rights activists who say such coor-
dination should be withheld until Indonesia does more to address
human rights abuses by its military. ‘We want young officers from
Indonesia coming to the United States,’ said Bush. ‘We want there
to be exchanges between our military corps - that will help lead
to better understandings.’ Bush made his remarks after meeting
with the Indonesian president, who, Bush added, ‘told me he’s in
the process of reforming the military, and I believe him.’ 48 (In May
2002, Indonesian Defense Minister Matori met with US Defense
Secretary Rumsfeld at the Pentagon. Matori said his government
had begun to ‘reform the military.’ Rumsfeld believed him enough
to call for ‘military-to-military relations’ to be ‘re-established.’) 49

Indonesian officials saying they’re going to reform the military
is like officials in Nevada saying they’re going to crack down on
gambling. For forty years the Indonesian military has engaged in
mass murder and other atrocities, in Jakarta, East Timor, Aceh,
Papua, and elsewhere, taking the lives of well over a million people,

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

including several Americans in recent years. For forty years rela-
tions between the US and Indonesian militaries have been one of
the very closest of such contacts in the Third World for the United
States, despite the occasional objections and prohibitions from
Congress. For forty years, American officials have been saying
that they have to continue training and arming Indonesia’s military
because the contact with the American military will have some
kind of ennobling effect. For forty years it has had no such effect
at all. As Senator Tom Harkin (D.-Iowa) observed in 1999: ‘I have
seen no evidence in my 24 years in Congress of one instance where
because of American military involvement with another military
that the Americans have stopped that foreign army from carrying
out atrocities against their own people. No evidence, none.’ 50

Yet the pretense continues, for what else can an American offi-
cial say? Something like the following? ‘We don’t care how brutal
the Indonesian military is because they got rid of Sukarno and his
irritating nationalism and neutralism for us, and for forty years
they’ve been killing people we call communists, killing people
we call terrorists, and protecting our oil, natural gas, mining, and
other corporate interests against Indonesian protestors. Now if
that’s not freedom and democracy, I don’t know what is.’

[As we’ll see from State Department cables in the WikiLeaks
chapter, the Obama administration renewed military ties with
Indonesia in spite of serious concerns expressed by American
diplomats that the Indonesian military’s human rights abuses in
the province of West Papua were stoking unrest in the region.

The United States also overturned a ban on training the In-
donesian Kopassus army special forces - despite the Kopassus’s
long history of arbitrary detention, torture, and murder - after
the Indonesian president threatened to derail President Obama’s
trip to the country in November 2010.]

TERRORISM

A safer world for Americans...
if they don’t leave home

Supporters of US foreign policy have been repeating the point
ever since the attacks of September 11, 2001: US counterterrorism
policy has worked. How do they know? Because there haven’t
been any successful terrorist attacks in the United States in all
the years since that infamous day.

True, but there weren’t any terrorist attacks in the United
States in the six years before September 11, 2001 either, the last
one being the Oklahoma City bombing of April 19, 1995. The
absence of terrorist attacks in the US appears to be the norm,
with or without a War on Terror.

More significantly, in the years since 9/11 the United States
has been the target of terrorist attacks on scores of occasions,
not even counting those in Iraq or Afghanistan - attacks on
military, diplomatic, civilian, Christian, and other targets as-
sociated with the United States; in the Middle East, South Asia,
and the Pacific; more than a dozen times in Pakistan alone. The
attacks include the October 2002 bombings of two nightclubs in
Bali, Indonesia, which killed more than 200 people, almost all
of them Americans and citizens of their Australian and British

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

war allies; the following year brought the heavy bombing of the
US-managed Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia, the site of
diplomatic receptions and 4th of July celebrations held by the
American embassy; and other horrendous attacks in later years
on US allies in Madrid and London because of the war.

Land of the free, home of the War on Terror

David Hicks is a 31-year-old Australian who in a plea-bargain
with a US military court served nine months in prison, largely
in Australia. That was after five years at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
without being charged with a crime, without a trial, without a
conviction. Under the deal, Hicks agreed not to talk to reporters
for one year (a terrible slap in the face of free speech), to forever
waive any profit from telling his story (a slap - mon Dieu! - in the
face of free enterprise), to submit to US interrogation and testify
at future US trials or international tribunals (an open invitation
to the US government to hound the young man for the rest of his
life), to renounce any claims of mistreatment or unlawful deten-
tion (a requirement which would be unconstitutional in a civilian
US court). ‘If the United States were not ashamed of its conduct,
it wouldn’t hide behind a gag order,’ said Hicks’s attorney Ben
Wizner of the American Civil Liberties Union. 1

Like so many other ‘terrorists’ held by the United States in
recent years, Hicks had been ‘sold’ to the American military for
a bounty offered by the US, a phenomenon repeated frequently
in Afghanistan and Pakistan. US officials had to know that, once
they offered payments to a very poor area to turn in bodies,
almost anyone was fair game.

Other ‘terrorists’ have been turned in as reprisals for all
sorts of personal hatreds and feuds. Many others - abroad and
in the United States - have been incarcerated by the United
States simply for working for, or merely contributing money to,

TERRORISM

charitable organizations with alleged or real ties to a ‘terrorist
organization,’ as determined by a list kept by the State Depart-
ment, a list conspicuously political.

It was recently disclosed that an Iraqi resident of Britain is
being released from Guantanamo after four years. His crime?
He refused to work as an informer for the CIA and MI5, the
British security service. His business partner is still being held
in Guantanamo, for the same crime. 2

Finally, there are those many other poor souls who have been
picked up simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
‘Most of these guys weren’t fighting. They were running,’ General
Martin Lucenti, former deputy commander of Guantanamo, has
pointed out. 3

Thousands of people have been thrown into hell on earth for no
earthly reason. The world media have been overflowing with their
individual tales of horror and sadness for years. Guantanamo’s
former commander, General Jay Hood, said: ‘Sometimes we just
didn’t get the right folks.’ 4 Not that the torture they were put
through would be justihed if they were in fact ‘the right folks.’

Hicks was taken into custody in Afghanistan in 2001. He was
a convert to Islam and like others from many countries had gone
to Afghanistan for religious reasons, had wound up on the side
of the Taliban in the civil war that had been going on since the
early 1990s, and had received military training at a Taliban camp.
The United States has insisted on calling such camps ‘terrorist
training camps,’ or ‘anti-American terrorist training camps,’ or
‘al-Qaeda terrorist training camps.’ Almost every individual or
group not in love with US foreign policy that Washington wants
to stigmatize is charged with being associated with, or being
a member of, al-Qaeda, as if there’s a precise and meaningful
distinction between people retaliating against the atrocities of
American imperialism while being a member of al-Qaeda and re-
taliating against the atrocities of American imperialism while not

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

being a member of al-Qaeda; as if al-Qaeda gives out membership
cards to fit into your wallet, and there are chapters of al-Qaeda
that put out a weekly newsletter and hold a potluck on the first
Monday of each month.

It should be noted that for nearly half a century much of
southern Florida has been one big training camp for anti-Castro
terrorists. None of their groups - which have carried out many
hundreds of serious terrorist acts in the US as well as abroad,
including bombing a passenger airplane in flight - is on the State
Department list. Nor were the Contras of Nicaragua in the 1980s,
heavily supported by the United States, about whom former CIA
director Stansfield Turner testified: ‘I believe it is irrefutable that a
number of the Contras’ actions have to be characterized as terror-
ism, as State-supported terrorism.’ 5 The same applies to groups in
Kosovo and Bosnia, with close ties to al-Qaeda, including Osama
bin Laden, in the recent past, but which have allied themselves
with Washington’s agenda in the former Yugoslavia since the
1990s. Now we learn of US support for a Pakistani group called
Jundullah and led by a Taliban, which has taken responsibility
for the kidnappings and deaths and of more than a dozen Iranian
soldiers and officials in cross-border attacks. 6 Do not hold your
breath waiting for the name Jundullah to appear on the State
Department list of terrorist organizations; nor any of the several
other ethnic militias being supported by the CIA to carry out
terrorist bombing and assassination attacks in Iran. 7

The same political selectivity applies to many of the groups
which are on the list, particularly those opposed to American or
Israeli policies.

Amid growing pressure from their home countries and inter-
national human rights advocates, scores of Guantanamo detainees
have been quietly repatriated in the past three years. Now a
new analysis by lawyers who have represented detainees at this
twenty-fir st- century Devil’s Island says this policy undermines

TERRORISM

Washington’s own claims about the threat posed by many of the
prison camp’s residents. The report, based on US government
case files for Saudi detainees sent home over the past three years,
shows inmates being systematically freed from custody within
weeks of their return. In half the cases studied, the detainees had
been turned over to US forces by Pakistani police or troops in
return for financial rewards. Many others were accused of terror-
ism connections in part because their Arab nicknames matched
those found in a computer database of al-Qaeda members, docu-
ments show. In December, a survey by the Associated Press found
that 84 percent of released detainees - 205 out of 245 individuals
whose cases could be tracked - were set free after being released
to the custody of their native countries. ‘There are certainly
bad people in Guantanamo Bay, but there are also other cases
where it’s hard to understand why the people are still there,’
said Anant Raut, co-author of the report, who has visited the
detention camp three times. ‘We were struggling to End some
rationality, something to comfort us that it wasn’t just random.
But we didn’t find it.’

The report states that many of the US attempts to link the
detainees to terrorism groups were based on evidence the authors
describe as circumstantial and ‘highly questionable,’ such as the
travel routes the detainees had followed in flying commercially
from one Middle Eastern country to another. American officials
have associated certain travel routes with al-Qaeda, when in fact,
says the report, the routes ‘involve ordinary connecting flights in
major international airports.’ With regard to accusations based on
similar names, the report states: ‘This accusation appears to be
based upon little more than similarities in the transliterations of
a detainee’s name and a name found on one of the hard drives.’

Raut said he was most struck by the high percentage of Saudi
detainees who had been captured and turned over by Pakistani
forces. In effect, he said, for at least half the individuals in his

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

report the United States ‘had no first-hand knowledge of their ac-
tivities’ in Afghanistan before their capture and imprisonment. 8

When Michael Scheuer, the former CIA officer who headed the
Agency’s Osama bin Laden unit, was told that the largest group
in Guantanamo came from custody in Pakistan, he declared: ‘We
absolutely got the wrong people.’ 9 Never mind. They were all
treated equally: all thrown into solitary confinement; shackled
blindfolded, forced to undergo excruciating physical contortions
for long periods, denied medicine; sensory deprivation and sleep
deprivation were used, alomg with two dozen other methods
of torture which American officials do not call torture. (If you
tortured these officials, they might admit that it’s ‘torture lite.’)

‘The idea is to build an antiterrorist global environment,’
a senior American defense official said in 2003, ‘so that in 20
to 30 years, terrorism will be like slave-trading, completely
discredited.’ 10

When will the dropping of bombs on innocent civilians by the
United States, and invading and occupying their country, without
their country attacking or threatening the US, become completely
discredited? When will the use of depleted uranium and cluster
bombs and CIA torture renditions become things that even men
like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld will
be too embarrassed to defend?

Australian/British journalist John Pilger has noted that in
George Orwell’s 1984 ‘three slogans dominate society: war is peace,
freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength. Today’s slogan, war
on terrorism, also reverses meaning. The war is terrorism.’

Saved again, thank the Lord, saved again

(August 18, 2006)

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us

in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave

TERRORISM

national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at
home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us
up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant
funds demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never
to have happened, seem never to have been quite real. (General
Douglas MacArthur, 1957 11 )

So now we’ve (choke) just been (gasp) saved from the simultane-
ous blowing up of as many as ten airplanes headed toward the
United States from the UK. Wow, thank you Brits, thank you
Homeland Security. And thanks for preventing the destruction
of the Sears Tower in Chicago, saving lower Manhattan from a
terrorist-unleashed flood, smashing the frightful Canadian ‘terror
plot’ with seventeen arrested, ditto the three Toledo terrorists,
and squashing the Los Angeles al-Qaeda plot to fly a hijacked
airliner into a skyscraper.

The Los Angeles plot of 2002 was proudly announced by
George W. in 2006. It has since been totally discredited. Declared
one senior counterterrorism official: ‘There was no definitive plot.
It never materialized or got past the thought stage.’ 12

And the scare about ricin in the UK, which our own Mr Cheney
used as part of the build-up for the invasion of Iraq, telling an
audience on January 10, 2003: ‘The gravity of the threat we face
was underscored in recent days when British police arrested . . .
suspected terrorists in London and discovered a small quantity
of ricin, one of the world’s deadliest poisons.’ It turned out there
was not only no plot, there was no ricin. The Brits discovered
almost immediately that the substance wasn’t ricin but kept that
secret for more than two years. 13

From what is typical in terrorist scares, it is likely that the
individuals arrested in the UK on August 10, 2006 were guilty of
what George Orwell, in 1984, called ‘thoughtcrimes.’ That is to
say, they haven’t actually done anything. At most, they’ve thought
about doing something the government would label ‘terrorism.’

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

Perhaps not even very serious thoughts, perhaps just venting their
anger at the exceptionally violent role played by the UK and the
US in the Middle East and thinking out loud how nice it would
be to throw some of that violence back in the face of Blair and
Bush. And then, the fatal moment for them that ruins their lives
forever: their angry words are heard by the wrong person, who
reports them to the authorities. (In the Manhattan flood case the
formidable, dangerous ‘terrorists’ made mention on an Internet
chat room about blowing something up. 14 )

Soon a government agent provocateur appears, infiltrates the
group, and then actually encourages the individuals to think and
talk further about terrorist acts, to develop real plans instead of
youthful fantasizing, and even provides the individuals with some
of the means for carrying out these terrorist acts, like explosive
material and technical know-how, money and transportation,
whatever is needed to advance the plot. It’s known as ‘entrap-
ment,’ and it’s supposed to be illegal, it’s supposed to be a power-
ful defense for the accused, but the authorities get away with it
all the time; and the accused get put away for a very long time.
And because of the role played by the agent provocateur, we may
never know whether any of the accused, on their own, would have
gone much further, if at all, like actually making a bomb, or, in
the present case, even making transatlantic flight reservations,
since many of the accused reportedly did not even have passports.
Government infiltrating and monitoring is one thing; encourage-
ment, pushing the plot forward, and scaring the public to make
political capital from it are quite something else.

Prosecutors have said that the seven men in Miami charged
with conspiring to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago and FBI
buildings in other cities had sworn allegiance to al-Qaeda. This
came after meeting with a confidential government informant who
was posing as a representative of the terrorist group. Did they
swear or hold such allegiance, one must wonder, before meeting

TERRORISM

with the informant? ‘In essence,’ reported the Independent , ‘the
entire case rests upon conversations between Narseal Batiste, the
apparent ringleader of the group, with the informant, who was
posing as a member of al-Qaeda but in fact belonged to the [FBI]
South Florida Terrorist Task Force.’ Batiste told the informant
that ‘he was organizing a mission to build an “Islamic army” in
order to wage jihad.’ He provided a list of things he needed: boots,
uniforms, machine guns, radios, vehicles, binoculars, bullet-proof
vests, firearms, and $50,000 in cash. Oddly enough, one thing
that was not asked for was any kind of explosive material. After
sweeps of various locations in Miami, government agents found
no explosives or weapons. ‘This group was more aspirational
than operational,’ said the FBI’s deputy director, while one FBI
agent described them as ‘social misfits.’ And, added the New
York Times , investigators openly acknowledged that the suspects
‘had only the most preliminary discussions about an attack.’ Yet
Cheney later hailed the arrests at a political fundraiser, calling
the group a ‘very real threat.’ 15

It was perhaps as great a threat as the suspects in the plot to
unleash a catastrophic flood in lower Manhattan by destroying a
huge underground wall that holds back the Hudson River. That
was the story first released by the authorities; after a while it
was replaced by the claim that the suspects were actually plot-
ting something aimed at the subway tunnels that run under the
river. 16 Which is more reliable, one must wonder, information
on Internet chat rooms or WMD tips provided by CIA Iraqi
informers? Or information obtained, as in the current case in
the UK, from Pakistani interrogators of the suspects, none of the
interrogators being known to be ardent supporters of Amnesty
International.

And the three men arrested in Toledo, Ohio, in February 2006
were accused of - are you ready? - plotting to recruit and train
terrorists to attack US and allied troops overseas. For saving us

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

from this horror we have a paid FBI witness to thank. He had
been an informer with the FBI for four years, and most likely
was paid for each new lead he brought in. In the Sears case, the
FBI paid almost $56,000 to two confidential informants, and
government officials also granted one of them immigration parole
so he could remain in the country. 17

There must be millions of people in the United States and
elsewhere who have thoughts about ‘terrorist acts.’ I might well
be one of them when I read about a gathering of Bush, Cheney,
and assorted neocons that’s going to take place. Given the daily
horror of Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Palestine in recent
times, little of which would occur if not for the government of
the United States of America and its allies, the numbers of people
having such thoughts must be multiplying rapidly. If I had been at
an American or British airport as the latest scare story unfolded,
waiting in an interminable line, having my flight canceled, or
being told I can’t have any carry-on luggage, I may have found it
irresistible at some point to declare loudly to my fellow suffering
passengers: ‘Y’know, folks, this security crap is only gonna get
worse and worse as long as the United States and Britain continue
to invade, bomb, overthrow, occupy, and torture the world!’ How
long would it be before I was pulled out of line and thrown into
some kind of custody?

If General MacArthur were alive today, would he dare to
publicly express the thoughts cited above?

Policymakers and security experts, reports the Associated
Press, say that ‘Law enforcers are now willing to act swiftly
against al- Qaeda sympathizers, even if it means grabbing wannabe
terrorists whose plots may be only pipe dreams.’ 18

The capture of dangerous would-be terrorists has been a
growth industry in the United States ever since the events of Sep-
tember 11, 2001. Do you remember the ‘shoe bomber’? Richard
Reid was his name and he was aboard an American Airlines

TERRORISM

flight from Paris to Miami on December 22, 2001; he tried to
detonate explosives hidden in his shoes, didn’t succeed, and was
overpowered by attendants and passengers. It’s because of him
that we have to take our shoes off at the airport.

There was also ‘the underwear bomber,’ Umar Farouk Abdul-
mutallab, referred to above, who tried to set off plastic explosives
sewn into his underwear while aboard a Northwest Airlines flight
as the plane approached Detroit airport in 2009. But he failed
to detonate them properly, producing only some popping noises
and a flame; another passenger jumped him and restrained him
as others put out the fire. It’s because of Mr Abdulmutallab that
we now virtually have to take our underwear off at airports.

And the reason we have strict rules about carrying liquids and
gels aboard an airplane? We can thank some other young clowns
in Europe in 2006 with pipe dreams about blowing up ten airlin-
ers with liquid explosives; they scarcely made it to step one. Since
the ‘bomb made from liquids and gels’ story was foisted upon
the public, several chemists and other experts have pointed out
the technical near-impossibility of manufacturing such a bomb
in a moving airplane, if for no other reason than the necessity of
spending at least an hour or two in the airplane bathroom.

Then there was Faisal Shahzad, the ‘Times Square bomber,’
who on May 1, 2010 parked his car in the heart of New York
City, tried to detonate various explosive devices in the car, but
succeeded in producing only smoke. He then walked away from
the car, after which he was arrested. It’s because of him that cars
are no longer permitted in Times Square. (No, that’s a joke, but
maybe not for long.)

The incompetence of these would-be bombers in being unable
to detonate their explosives is remarkable. You’d think they could
have easily gotten that critical and relatively simple part of the
operation down pat beforehand. What I find even more remark-
able is that neither of the two men aboard the airplanes thought

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

of going into the bathroom, closing the door, and then trying to
detonate the explosives. An 8-year-old child would have thought
of that. Are we supposed to take the ‘threat’ posed by such men
seriously?

‘The Department of Homeland Security would like to remind
passengers that you may not take any liquids onto the plane. This
includes ice cream, as the ice cream will melt and turn into a
liquid.” This was actually heard by one of my readers at Atlanta
airport in 2012. He laughed out loud. He informs me that he
didn’t know what was more bizarre, that such an announcement
was made or that he was the only person that he could see who
reacted to its absurdity.

Another example of the frightful terrorist threat was in October
2010 when we were told that two packages addressed to Chicago
had been found aboard American cargo planes, one in Dubai,
the other in England, containing what might, or might not, be
an explosive device; which might, or might not, have exploded.
Authorities said it was not known if the intent was to detonate
the packages in flight or in Chicago.

Now get this. Terrorists, we are told, are shipping bombs in
packages to the United States. They of course would want to
make the packages as innocuous looking as can be, right? Nothing
that would provoke any suspicion in the mind of an already very
suspicious American security establishment, right? So what do we
have? The packages were mailed from Yemen... and addressed
to Jewish synagogues in Chicago. . . Well folks, nothing to see
here, just keep moving. 19

A tale of two terrorists

Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person ever charged in the United
States in connection with the September n, 2001 attacks, tes-
tifying at his 2006 trial in Alexandria, Virginia: the sobbing

TERRORISM

September 11 survivors and family members who testified against
him were ‘disgusting’. . . He and other Muslims want to ‘extermi-
nate’ American Jews. . . executed Oklahoma City bomber Timothy
McVeigh was ‘the greatest American.’ 20 Moussaoui expressed his
willingness to kill Americans ‘any time, anywhere’... ‘I wish it
had happened not only on the 11th, but the 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th
and 16th.’ 21

Orlando Bosch, one of the masterminds behind the October
6, 1976 bombing of a Cuban passenger plane, blown out of the
sky with seventy-three people on board, including the entire
young Cuban fencing team, interviewed on April 8, 2006 by Juan
Manuel Cao of Channel 41 in Miami:

CAO: Did you down that plane in 1976?

bosch: If I tell you that I was involved, I will be inculpating myself
. . . and if I tell you that I did not participate in that action, you
would say that I am lying. I am therefore not going to answer one
thing or the other.

CAO: In that action 73 persons were killed...

bosch: No chico, in a war such as us Cubans who love liberty
wage against the tyrant [Fidel Castro], you have to down planes,
you have to sink ships, you have to be prepared to attack anything
that is within your reach.

CAO: But don’t you feel a little bit for those who were killed there,
for their families?

bosch: Who was on board that plane? Four members of the
Communist Party, five north Koreans, five Guyanese ... Who was
there? Our enemies.

CAO: And the fencers? The young people on board?

bosch: I saw the young girls on television. There were six of them.
After the end of the competition, the leader of the six dedicated
their triumph to the tyrant. She gave a speech filled with praise
for the tyrant. We had already agreed in Santo Domingo, that
everyone who comes from Cuba to glorify the tyrant had to run

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

the same risks as those men and women that fight alongside the
tyranny.

CAO: If you ran into the family members who were killed in that
plane, wouldn’t you think it difficult . . . ?

bosch: No, because in the end those who were there had to know
that they were cooperating with the tyranny in Cuba.

The difference between Zacarias Moussaoui and Orlando
Bosch is that one of them was put on trial and sentenced to life
in prison while the other walks around Miami a free man, free
enough to be interviewed on television. In 1983 the City Comis-
sion of Miami declared a ‘Dr Orlando Bosch Day.’ 22

Bosch had a partner in plotting the bombing of the Cuban
airliner: Luis Posada, a Cuban-born citizen of Venezuela. He lives
as a free man in the United States. His extradition has been re-
quested by Venezuela for several crimes, including the downing of
the airliner, part of the plotting having taken place in Venezuela.
But the Bush and Obama administrations have refused to send
him to Venezuela, for, despite his horrible crime, he’s an ally of
the empire; Venezuela and Cuba are not. Nor will Washington
try him in the US for the crime. However, the Convention for
the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Civil
Aviation (1973), of which the United States is a signatory, gives
Washington no discretion. Article 7 says that the state in which
‘the alleged offender is found shall, if it does not extradite him,
be obliged, without exception whatsoever and whether or not the
offence was committed in its territory, to submit the case to its
competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution.’ 23 Extradite
or prosecute. The United States does neither.

IRAQ

Iraq. Began with big lies. Ending with big lies. Never forget.

‘Most people don’t understand what they have been part of here,’
said Command Sgt. Major Ron Kelley as he and other American
troops prepared to leave Iraq in mid-December 2011. ‘We have
done a great thing as a nation. We freed a people and gave their
country back to them.’

‘It is pretty exciting,’ said another young American soldier in
Iraq. ‘We are going down in the history books, you might say.’ 1

Ah yes, the history books, the multi-volume, leather-bound,
richly-embossed set of ‘The Greatest Destructions of One
Country by Another.’ The newest volume can relate, with numer-
ous graphic photos, how the modern, educated, advanced nation
of Iraq was reduced to a quasi-failed state; how the Americans,
beginning in 1991, bombed for twelve years, with one dubious
excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the
government, tortured without inhibition, killed wantonly; how
the people of that unhappy land lost everything. . .

The loss of a functioning educational system. A 2005 UN study
revealed that 84 percent of the higher education establishments had
been ‘destroyed, damaged and robbed.’ The intellectual stock was
further depleted as many thousands of academics and other profes-
sionals fled abroad or were kidnapped or assassinated; hundreds of

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

thousands, perhaps a million, other Iraqis, most of them from the
vital, educated middle class, left for Jordan, Syria or Egypt, many
after receiving death threats. ‘Now I am isolated,’ said a middle-
class Sunni Arab, who decided to leave. ‘I have no government. I
have no protection from the government. Anyone can come to my
house, take me, kill me and throw me in the trash.’ 2

Loss of a functioning health-care system. And loss of the
public’s health. Deadly infections including typhoid and tuber-
culosis rampaged through the country. Iraq’s network of hospitals
and health centers, once admired throughout the Middle East,
was severely damaged by the war and looting.

The UN’s World Food Program reported that 400,000 Iraqi
children were suffering from ‘dangerous deficiencies of protein.’
Deaths from malnutrition and preventable diseases, particularly
among children, already a problem because of the twelve years of
US-imposed sanctions, increased as poverty and disorder made
access to a proper diet and medicines ever more difficult.

Thousands of Iraqis lost an arm or a leg, frequently from
unexploded US cluster bombs, which became land mines; cluster
bombs are a class of weapons denounced by human rights groups
as a cruelly random scourge on civilians, especially children who
pick them up.

Depleted uranium particles, from exploded US ordnance, float
in the Iraqi air, to be breathed into human bodies and to radiate
forever, and infect the water, the soil, the blood, and the genes,
producing malformed babies. And the use of napalm as well.
And white phosphorous. The most awful birth defects result.
The BBC told of doctors in the Iraqi city of Fallujah reporting
a high level of birth defects, with some blaming weapons used
by the United States during its fierce onslaughts of 2004 and
subsequently, which left much of the city in ruins. The level of
heart defects among newborn babies was said to be thirteen times
higher than in Europe. The BBC correspondent also saw children

IRAQ

in the city who were suffering from paralysis or brain damage,
and a photograph of one baby who was born with three heads.
He added that he heard many times that officials in Fallujah had
warned women that they should not have children. One doctor
in the city had compared data about birth defects from before
2003 - when she saw about one case every two months - with
the situation in 2010, when she saw cases every day. ‘I’ve seen
footage of babies born with an eye in the middle of the forehead,
the nose on the forehead,’ she said. 3

(‘Years from now when America looks out on a democratic
Middle East, growing in freedom and prosperity, Americans will
speak of the battles like Fallujah with the same awe and reverence
that we now give to Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima’ [in World War
II] - George W. Bush 4 )

The supply of safe drinking water, effective sewage disposal, and
reliable electricity all generally fell well below pre-invasion levels,
producing constant hardship for the public, in temperatures reach-
ing 115 degrees. To add to the misery, people waited all day in the
heat to purchase gasoline, due in part to oil production, the country’s
chief source of revenue, being less than half its previous level.

The water and sewerage system and other elements of the
infrastructure had been purposely destroyed by US bombing in
the first Gulf War of 1991. By 2003, the Iraqis had made great
strides in repairing the most essential parts of it. Then came
Washington’s renewed bombing.

The American military assaulted at least one hospital to
prevent it from giving out casualty figures from US attacks that
contradicted official US figures, which the hospital had been in
the habit of doing.

Numerous homes were broken into by US forces, the men
taken away, the women humiliated, the children traumatized;
on many occasions, the family said that the American soldiers
helped themselves to some of the family’s money.

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

There was destruction and looting of the country’s ancient
heritage, perhaps the world’s greatest archive of the human past.
Sites were left unprotected by the US military, which was busy
protecting oil facilities.

Iraq’s legal system, outside of the political sphere, was once
one of the most impressive and secular in the Middle East; now,
religious law increasingly prevails.

Women’s rights, previously enjoyed, fell under great danger of
being subject to harsh Islamic law. There is today a Shiite religious
ruling class in Iraq, which tolerates physical attacks on women for
showing a bare arm or for picnicking with a male friend. Men can
be harassed for wearing shorts in public, as can children playing
outside in shorts.

I see that Frontline on PBS this week has a documentary called
‘Bush’s War’. That’s what I’ve been calling it for a long time. It’s
not the ‘Iraq War.’ Iraq did nothing. Iraq didn’t plan 9/11. It didn’t
have weapons of mass destruction. It did have movie theaters
and bars and women wearing what they wanted and a significant
Christian population and one of the few Arab capitals with an
open synagogue. But that’s all gone now. Show a movie and you’ll
be shot in the head. Over a hundred women have been randomly
executed for not wearing a scarf. (Filmmaker Michael Moore,

March 24, 2008)

Sex trafficking, virtually nonexistent previously, has become a
serious issue.

Jews, Christians, and other non-Muslims have lost much of the
security they had enjoyed in Saddam’s secular society; many have
emigrated. The Kurds of Northern Iraq evicted Arabs from their
homes. Arabs evicted Kurds in other parts of the country.

A gulag of prisons run by the US and the new Iraqi government
featured a wide variety of torture and abuse; a human-rights
disaster area. Only a very small portion of the many tens of thou-
sands imprisoned by US forces were convicted of any crime.

IRAQ

Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the
first US occupation administration of Iraq in 2003, made free en-
terprise a guiding rule, shutting down 192 state-owned businesses
where the World Bank estimated 500,000 people were working. 5

Many people were evicted from their homes because they were
Baathist, Saddam Hussein’s party. US troops took part in some
of the evictions. They also demolished homes in fits of rage over
the killing of one of their buddies.

When US troops didn’t find who they were looking for, they
took who was there; wives were held until the husband turned
himself in, a practice which Hollywood films stamped in the
American mind as being a particular evil of the Nazis; it’s also
an example of collective punishment of civilians, forbidden under
the Geneva Convention.

Continual American bombing assaults on neighborhoods left an
uncountable number of destroyed homes, workplaces, mosques,
bridges, roads, and everything else that goes into the making of
modern civilized life.

Haditha, Fallujah, Samarra, Rarnadi. . . names that will live in
infamy for the wanton destruction, murder, and assaults upon
human beings and human rights carried out in those places by
US forces.

American soldiers and private security companies regularly killed
people and left the bodies lying in the street; civil war, death squads,
kidnapping, car bombs, rape, each and every day. . . Iraq became
the most dangerous place on earth. US-trained Iraqi military and
police forces killed even more, as did the insurgency. An entire new
generation growing up on violence and sectarian ethics; this will
poison the Iraqi psyche for many years to come.

US intelligence and military police officers often freed danger-
ous criminals in return for a promise to spy on insurgents.

Iraqis protesting about particular issues were shot by US forces
on several occasions.

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

At various times, Iraqi newspapers were closed down by the
American occupation for what they printed; reporters were shot
by American troops; the US killed, wounded, or jailed reporters
from A 1 Jazeera television, closed the station’s office, and banned
it from certain areas because occupation officials didn’t like the
news the station was reporting; the Pentagon planted paid-for
news articles in the Iraqi press to serve propaganda purposes.

This war [in Iraq] is the most important liberal, revolutionary
U.S. democracy-building project since the Marshall Plan ... it is
one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad.
(Thomas Friedman, much-acclaimed New York Times foreign
affairs analyst, November 2003 6 )

President Bush has placed human rights at the center of his foreign
policy agenda in unprecedented ways. (Michael Gerson, columnist
for the Washington Post , and former speech-writer for George W.
Bush, 2007 7 )

[The war in Iraq] is one of the noblest endeavors the United
States, or any great power, has ever undertaken. (David Brooks,
NPR commentator and New York Times columnist, 2007 8 )

If this is what leading American public intellectuals believed and
imparted to their audiences, is it any wonder that the media can
short-circuit people’s critical faculties altogether? It should also be
noted that these three journalists were all with ‘liberal’ media.

It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were
better before the U.S. -led invasion in 2003. ( Washington Post , May
5, 2007)

It was indeed common. National Public Radio foreign correspon-
dent Loren Jenkins, serving in NPR’s Baghdad bureau in 2006,
met with a senior Shiite cleric, a man who was described in the
NPR report as ‘a moderate’ and as a person trying to lead his
followers into practicing peace and reconciliation. He had been
jailed by Saddam Hussein and forced into exile. Jenkins asked

IRAQ

him: ‘What would you think if you had to go back to Saddam
Hussein?’ The cleric replied that he’d ‘rather see Iraq under
Saddam Hussein than the way it is now.’ 9

That same year, in a BBC interview, UN Secretary General
Kofi Annan agreed when it was suggested that some Iraqis believe
life is worse now than it was under Saddam Hussein’s regime.

I think they are right in the sense of the average Iraqi’s life. If I
were an average Iraqi obviously I would make the same compari-
son, that they had a dictator who was brutal but they had their
streets, they could go out, their kids could go to school and come
back home without a mother or father worrying, ‘Am I going to see
my child again?’ 10

No matter... drum roll, please... Stand tall American GI hero!
And don’t even think of ever apologizing or paying any repara-
tions. Iraq is forced by Washington to continue paying reparations
to Kuwait for Iraq’s invasion in 1990 (an invasion instigated in
no small measure by the United States). And - deep breath here!
- Vietnam has been compensating the United States. Since 1997
Hanoi has been paying off about $ 145 million in debts left by the
defeated South Vietnamese government for American food and
infrastructure aid. Thus, Hanoi is reimbursing the United States
for part of the cost of the war waged against it. 11 How much will
Iraq be paying the United States?

On December 14, 2011, at the Fort Bragg, North Carolina mili-
tary base, Barack Obama stood before an audience of soldiers to
speak about the Iraq War. It was a moment in which the president
of the United States found it within his heart and soul - as well
as within his oft-praised (supposed) intellect - to proclaim:

This is an extraordinary achievement, nearly nine years in the
making. And today, we remember everything that you did to make
it possible. . . . Years from now, your legacy will endure. In the
names of your fallen comrades etched on headstones at Arlington,

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

and the quiet memorials across our country. In the whispered
words of admiration as you march in parades, and in the freedom
of our children and grandchildren. ... So God bless you all, God
bless your families, and God bless the United States of America. . . .
You have earned your place in history because you sacrificed so
much for people you have never met.

Does Mr Obama, the Peace Laureate, believe the words that come
out of his mouth? Barack H. Obama believes only in being the
president of the United States. It is the only strong belief the
man holds.

But freedom has indeed reigned - for the great multinationals
to extract everything they can from Iraq’s resources and labor
without the hindrance of public interest laws, environmental
regulations, or worker protections.

Yet, despite all of the above, when the subject is Iraq and the
person I’m having a discussion with has no other argument left
to defend LTS policy, at least at the moment, I may be asked:

‘Just tell me one thing, are you glad that Saddam Hussein is
out of power?’

And I say: ‘No.’

And the person says: ‘No?’

And I say: ‘No. Tell me, if you went into surgery to correct a
knee problem and the surgeon mistakenly amputated your entire
leg, what would you think if someone then asked you: Are you
glad that you no longer have a knee problem? The people of Iraq
no longer have a Saddam problem.’

And many Iraqis actually supported him.

US foreign policy, the mainstream media, and Alzheimer’s

There’s no letup, is there? The preparation of the American
mind, the world mind, for the next gala performance of D&D
- Death and Destruction. The bunker-buster bombs are now

IRAQ

30,000 pounds each one, six times as heavy as the previous
delightful model. But the Masters of War still want to be loved;
they need for you to believe them when they say they have no
choice, that Iran is the latest threat to life as we know it, no time
to waste.

The preparation of minds was just as fervent before the in-
vasion of Iraq in March 2003. And when it turned out that Iraq
did not have any kind of arsenal of weapons of mass destruction
(WMD)... well, our power elite found other justifications for the
invasion, and didn’t look back. Some berated Iraq: ‘Why didn’t
they tell us that? Did they want us to bomb them?’

In actuality, before the US invasion high Iraqi officials had
stated clearly on repeated occasions that they had no such
weapons. In August 2002, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq
Aziz told American newscaster Dan Rather on CBS: ‘We do not
possess any nuclear or biological or chemical weapons.’ 12 In De-
cember, Aziz stated to Ted Koppel on ABC: ‘The fact is that we
don’t have weapons of mass destruction. We don’t have chemical,
biological, or nuclear weaponry.’ 13 Hussein himself told Rather in
February 2003: ‘These missiles have been destroyed. There are
no missiles that are contrary to the prescription of the United
Nations [as to range] in Iraq. They are no longer there.’ 14

Moreover, General Hussein Kamel, former head of Iraq’s secret
weapons program, and a son-in-law of Saddam Hussein, told
the UN in 1995 that Iraq had destroyed its banned missiles and
chemical and biological weapons soon after the Persian Gulf War
of 1991. 15

There are yet other examples of Iraqi officials telling the world
that the WMD were non-existent.

And if there were still any uncertainty remaining, in July 2010
Hans Blix, former chief United Nations weapons inspector, who
led a doomed hunt for WMD in Iraq, told a British inquiry into
the 2003 invasion that those who were ‘too percent certain there

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

were weapons of mass destruction’ in Iraq turned out to have
‘less than zero percent knowledge’ of where the purported hidden
caches might be. He testified that he had warned British Prime
Minister Tony Blair in a February 2003 meeting - as well as
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in separate talks - that
Hussein might have no weapons of mass destruction. 16

Those of you who don’t already have serious doubts about the
American mainstream media’s knowledge and understanding of
US foreign policy should consider this: despite the two revelations
on Dan Rather’s CBS programs, and the other revelations noted
above, in January 2008 we find CBS reporter Scott Pelley inter-
viewing FBI agent George Piro, who had interviewed Saddam
Hussein before he was executed:

pelley: And what did he tell you about how his weapons of mass
destruction had been destroyed?

piro: He told me that most of the WMD had been destroyed by
the U.N. inspectors in the ’90s, and those that hadn’t been de-
stroyed by the inspectors were unilaterally destroyed by Iraq.

pelley: He had ordered them destroyed?
piro: Yes.

pelley: So why keep the secret? Why put your nation at risk?

Why put your own life at risk to maintain this charade? 17

The United States and Israel are preparing to attack Iran
because of their alleged development of nuclear weapons, which
Iran has denied on many occasions. Of the Iraqis who warned
the United States that it was mistaken about the WMD, Saddam
Hussein was executed, Tariq Aziz is awaiting execution. Which
Iranian officials is USrael going to hang after their country is
laid to waste?

Would it have mattered if the Bush administration had fully
believed Iraq when it said it had no WMD? Probably not. There
is ample evidence that Bush knew this to be the case, or at a

IRAQ

minimum should have seriously suspected it; the same applies to
Tony Blair. Saddam Hussein did not sufficiently appreciate just
how psychopathic his two adversaries were. Bush was determined
to vanquish Iraq, for the sake of Israel, for control of oil, and for
expanding the empire with new bases, though in the end most of
this didn’t work out as the empire expected; for some odd reason,
it seems that the Iraqi people resented being bombed, invaded,
occupied, demolished, and tortured.

But if Iran is in fact building nuclear weapons, we have to ask:
is there some international law that says that the US, the UK,
Russia, China, Israel, France, Pakistan, and India are entitled to
nuclear weapons, but Iran is not? If the United States had known
that the Japanese had deliverable atomic bombs, would Hiroshima
and Nagasaki have been destroyed? Israeli military historian
Martin van Creveld has written: ‘The world has witnessed how
the United States attacked Iraq for, as it turned out, no reason
at all. Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they
would be crazy.’ 18

Examine a map: Iran sits directly between two of the United
States’ great obsessions - Iraq and Afghanistan. . . directly between
two of the world’s greatest oil regions - the Persian Gulf and
Caspian Sea... it’s part of the encirclement of the two leading
potential threats to American world domination - Russia and
China... Tehran will never be a client state or obedient poodle
to Washington. How could any good, self-respecting Washington
imperialist resist such a target? Bombs Away!

The sign has been put out front: ‘Iraq is open for business’

In 2005, the British NGO Platform, issued a report, Crude
Designs: The Rip-Off of Iraq’s Oil Wealth , disclosing the Ameri-
can occupation’s massive giveaway of the sovereign nation’s most
valuable commodity, oil. Among its findings:

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

The report revealed how an oil policy with origins in the US
State Department is on course to be adopted in Iraq, soon after
the December elections, with no public debate and at enormous
potential cost. The policy allocates the majority of Iraq’s oilfields
- accounting for at least 64% of the country’s oil reserves - for
development by multinational oil companies.

The estimated cost to Iraq over the life of the new oil contracts
is $74 to $194 billion, compared with leaving oil development in
public hands. The contracts would guarantee massive profits to
foreign companies, with rates of return of 42 to 162 percent. The
kinds of contracts that will provide these returns are known as
production sharing agreements. PSAs have been heavily promoted
by the US government and oil majors and have the backing of
senior figures in the Iraqi Oil Ministry. However, PSAs last for
25-40 years, are usually secret, and prevent governments from
later altering the terms of the contract. 19 Crude Designs author
and lead researcher Greg Muttitt says: ‘The form of contracts
being promoted is the most expensive and undemocratic option
available. Iraq’s oil should be for the benefit of the Iraqi people,
not foreign oil companies.’ 20

Noam Chomsky remarked: ‘We’re supposed to believe that the
US would’ve invaded Iraq if it was an island in the Indian Ocean
and its main exports were pickles and lettuce. This is what we’re
supposed to believe.’ 21

Another charming tale about the noble mission

On April 6, 2004 Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez was in
Iraq in video teleconference with President Bush, Secretary of
State Colin Powell, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
One major American offensive was in operation, another about to
be launched. According to Sanchez’s memoir, Powell was talking
tough that day:

IRAQ

‘We’ve got to smash somebody’s ass quickly,’ Powell said. ‘There
has to be a total victory somewhere. We must have a brute demon-
stration of power.’ Then Bush spoke: ‘At the end of this campaign
al-Sadr must be gone. At a minimum, he will be arrested. It is
essential he be wiped out. Kick ass! If somebody tries to stop the
march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must
be tougher than hell! This Vietnam stuff, this is not even close. It
is a mind-set. We can’t send that message. It’s an excuse to prepare
us for withdrawal. . . . There is a series of moments and this is one
of them. Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a
better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident!
Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!’
(Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story , pp. 349-50)

Who would have thought? Bush has been vindicated

(December 11, 2007)

We’re making progress in Iraq! The ‘surge’ is working, we’re
told. Never mind that the war is totally and perfectly illegal. Not
to mention totally and perfectly, even exquisitely, immoral. It’s
making progress. That’s a good thing, isn’t it? Meanwhile, the
al-Qaeda types have greatly increased their number all over the
Middle East and South Asia, so their surge is making progress too.
Good for them. And speaking of progress in the War on Terror,
is anyone progressing faster and better than the Taliban?

The American progress is measured by a decrease in violence,
the White House has decided - a daily holocaust has been cut
back to a daily multiple catastrophe. And who’s keeping the
count? Why, the same good people who have been regularly
feeding us a lie for the past five years about the number of Iraqi
deaths, completely ignoring the epidemiological studies. (Real
Americans don’t do Arab body counts.) An analysis by the Wash-
ington Post left the administration’s claim pretty much in tatters.
The article opened with: ‘The U.S. military’s claim that violence
has decreased sharply in Iraq in recent months has come under

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

scrutiny from many experts within and outside the government,
who contend that some of the underlying statistics are question-
able and selectively ignore negative trends.’ The article then
continued in the same critical vein. 22

To the extent that there may have been a reduction in violence,
we must also keep in mind that, thanks to this lovely little war,
there are several million Iraqis either dead or in exile abroad,
or in bursting American and Iraqi prisons; there must also be
a few million more wounded who are homebound or otherwise
physically limited; so the number of potential victims and killers
has been greatly reduced. Moreover, extensive ethnic cleansing
has taken place in Iraq (another good indication of progress,
n’est-ce pas?) - Sunnis and Shiites are now living more in their
own special enclaves than before, none of those stinking mixed
communities with their unholy mixed marriages, so violence of
the sectarian type has also gone down. 23 On top of all this, US
soldiers have been venturing out a lot less (for fear of things like. . .
well, dying), so the violence against our noble lads is also down.
Remember that insurgent attacks on American forces is how the
Iraqi violence (post-2003 invasion) all began in the first place.

Oh, did I mention that 2007 was the deadliest year for US
troops since the war began? 24 It’s been the same worst year for
American forces in Afghanistan.

One of the signs of the reduction in violence in Iraq, the
administration would like us to believe, is that many Iraqi families
are returning from Syria, where they had fled because of the
violence. The New York Times , however, reported that ‘Under
intense pressure to show results after months of political stale-
mate, the [Iraqi] government has continued to publicize figures
that exaggerate the movement back to Iraq.’ The count, it turns
out, included all Iraqis crossing the border, for whatever reason.
A United Nations survey found that 46 percent were leaving Syria
because they could not afford to stay; 25 percent said they fell

IRAQ

victim to a stricter Syrian visa policy; and only 14 percent said
they were returning because they had heard about improved
security. 25

How long can it be before vacation trips to ‘Exotic Iraq’
are flashed across our television screens? ‘Baghdad’s Beautiful
Beaches Beckon.’ Just step over the bodies. Indeed, the State
Department has recently advertised for a ‘business development/
tourism’ expert to work in Baghdad, ‘with a particular focus on
tourism and related services.’ 26

We’ve been told often by American leaders and media that
the US forces can’t leave because of the violence, because there
would be a bloodbath. Now there’s an alleged significant decrease
in the violence. Is that being used as an argument to get out - a
golden opportunity for the United States to leave, with head held
high? Of course not.

The past is unpredictable: leaving Iraq vs leaving Vietnam

(August 10, 2007)

As the call for withdrawal of American forces from Iraq grows
louder, those who support the war are rewriting history to paint
a scary picture of what happened in Vietnam after the United
States military left in March 1973.

They speak of invasions by the North Vietnamese communists,
but fail to point out that a two-decades-long civil war had simply
continued after the Americans left, minus a good deal of the horror
that US bombs and chemical weapons had been causing.

They speak of the ‘bloodbath’ that followed the American with-
drawal, a term that implies killing of large numbers of civilians
who didn’t support the communists. But this never happened.
If it had taken place the anti-communists in the United States
who supported the war in Vietnam would have been more than
happy to publicize a ‘commie bloodbath.’ It would have made

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

big headlines all over the world. The fact that you can’t find
anything of the sort is indicative of the fact that nothing like a
bloodbath took place. It would be difficult to otherwise disprove
this negative.

‘Some 600,000 Vietnamese drowned in the South China Sea
attempting to escape,’ proclaimed the conservative WorldNetDaily
website recently. 27 Has anyone not confined to a right-wing happy
farm ever heard of this before?

They mix Vietnam and Cambodia together in the same thought,
leaving the impression that the horrors of Pol Pot included
Vietnam. This is the conservative National Review Online:

Six weeks later, the last Americans lifted off in helicopters from the
roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon, leaving hundreds of panicked
South Vietnamese immediately behind and an entire region to
the mercy of the communists. The scene was similar in Phnom
Penh [Cambodia] . The torture and murder spree that followed left
millions of corpses . 28

And here’s dear old Fox News, on July 26, 2007, reporters Sean
Hannity and Alan Colmes, with their guest, actor Jon Voight.
Voight says ‘Right now, we’re having a lot of people who don’t
know a whole lot of things crying for us pulling out of Iraq.
This - there was a bloodbath when we pulled out of Vietnam,
2.5 million people in Cambodia and Vietnam - South Vietnam
were slaughtered.’ Alan Colmes’s response, in its entirety: ‘Yes,
sir.’ Hannity said nothing. The many devoted listeners of Fox
News could only nod their heads knowingly.

In actuality, instead of a bloodbath of those who had collabo-
rated with the enemy, the Vietnamese sent them to ‘re-education’
camps, a more civilized treatment than in post-World War II
Europe where many of those who had collaborated with the
Germans were publicly paraded, shaven bald, humiliated in other
ways, and/or hanged from the nearest tree. But some conservatives

IRAQ

today would have you believe that the Vietnamese camps were
virtually little Auschwitzes. 29

Another historical reminder: since it’s generally accepted that
the United States lost the war in Vietnam, and since we were told
back then that the war was a battle for our freedom, then the ‘fight
for our freedom’ must have been unsuccessful, and we must be
under the occupation of the North Vietnamese Army. Next time
you’re out on the street and you see a passing NVA patrol, please
wave and tell them that I say hello.

Can anyone find a message hidden here?

The following quotations all come from the same article in the
Washington Post of August 4, 2006 by Ann Scott Tyson concern-
ing the Iraqi town of Hit:

Residents are quick to argue that the American presence incites
those attacks, and they blame the U.S. military rather than insur-
gents for turning their town into a combat zone. The Americans
should pull out, they say, and let them solve their own problems.

‘We want the same thing. I want to go home to my wife,’ said an
American soldier.

‘Another U.S. officer put it more bluntly: “Nobody wants us
here, so why are we here? That’s the big question.’”

‘If we leave, all the attacks would stop, because we’d be gone.’

‘The problem is with the Americans. They only bring prob-
lems,’ said watermelon vendor Sefuab Ganiydum, 35. ‘Closing the
bridge, the curfew, the hospital. It’s better for U.S. forces to leave
the city.’

‘What did we do to have all this suffering?’ asked Ramsey
Abdullah Hindi, 60, sitting outside a tea shop. Ignoring U.S.
troops within earshot, he said Iraqis were justified to attack them.
‘They have a right to fight against the Americans because of their
religion and the bad treatment. We will stand until the last,’ he said
somberly.

City officials, too, are adamant that U.S. troops leave Hit.

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

‘I’m the guy doing the good stuff and I get shot at all the time!
Nobody is pro-American in this city. They either tolerate us or
all-out hate us,’ said a US Marine major.

‘If we do leave, the city will be a lot better and they’ll build it a
lot better.’

This just in: Bush has just read this article and says the hidden
message is that the United States is bringing freedom and de-
mocracy to Iraq.

Chutzpah of an imperial size

Do you remember the classic example of chutzpah ? It’s the young
man who kills his parents and then asks the judge for mercy
on the grounds that he’s an orphan. The Bush administration’s
updated version of that was starting a wholly illegal, immoral,
and devastating war and then dismissing all kinds of criticism
of its action on the grounds that ‘we’re at war.’

They used this excuse to defend warrantless spying, to defend
the imprisonment of people for years without charging them
with a crime, to abuse and torture them, to ignore the Geneva
Convention and other international treaties; they used it against
Democrats, accusing them of partisanship during ‘a time of war’;
they used it to justify the expansion of presidential powers and
the weakening of checks and balances. In short, they claimed
‘We can do whatever we want about anything at all related to this
war, because we’re at war.’

‘War is war,’ said Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, ‘and
it has never been the case that when you captured a combatant
you have to give them a jury trial in your civil courts. Give
me a break .’ 30 Scalia, in his public talks, implies that prisoners
held in the far-flung American gulag were all ‘captured on the
battlefield .’ 31 But this is simply false. Very few of the poor souls
were captured on any kind of battlefield, few had even a gun in

IRAQ

their hand; most were just in the wrong place at the wrong time
or were turned in by an informer for an American bounty or a
personal grudge.

The American public, like all publics, requires only sufficient
repetition from ‘respectable’ sources to learn how to play the
game. In April 2006 many cities of Wisconsin held referendums
on bringing the troops home from Iraq. Here’s Jim Martin, 48, a
handyman in Evansville. He thinks that his city shouldn’t waste
taxpayers’ money running a referendum that means nothing. ‘The
fact of the matter remains, we’re at war,’ he said. 32 And here now
is Chris Sirncox, a leader in the Minuteman movement that patrols
the Mexican border: ‘If I catch you breaking into my country in
the middle of the night and we’re at war ... you’re a potential
enemy. I don’t care if you’re a busboy coming to wash dishes.’ 33

Dahlia Lithic of Slate.com summed up the legal arguments put
forth by the Bush administration thus:

The existing laws do not apply because this is a different kind
of war. It’s a different kind of war because the president says so.
The president gets to say so because he is president. ... We follow
the laws of war except to the extent that they do not apply to us.
These prisoners have all the rights to which they are entitled by
law, except to the extent that we have changed the law to limit their
rights. 34

Yet, George W. cut taxes heavily, something probably unprec-
edented while at war. Didn’t he realize that we’re at war?

Reconstruction, thy name is not the United States

(January 9, 2006)

In January 2006 the Bush administration announced that it did
not intend to seek any new funds for Iraq reconstruction in the
budget request going before Congress in February. When the last
of the reconstruction budget is spent, US officials in Baghdad

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

have made clear, other foreign donors and the fledgling Iraqi
government will have to take up what authorities say is tens
of billions of dollars of work yet to be done merely to bring
reliable electricity, water and other services to Iraq’s 26 million
people. 35

It should be noted that these services, including sanitation
systems, were largely destroyed by US bombing - most of it rather
deliberately - beginning in the first Gulf War: forty days and
nights the bombing went on, demolishing everything that goes
into the making of a modern society; followed by twelve years of
merciless economic sanctions, accompanied by twelve years of
often daily bombing supposedly to protect the so-called 110-fly
zones; finally the bombing, invasion and widespread devasta-
tion beginning in March 2003 and continuing even as you read
this. ‘The U.S. never intended to completely rebuild Iraq,’ Brig.
Gen. William McCoy, the Army Corps of Engineers commander
overseeing the work, told reporters at a recent news conference.
McCoy said: ‘This was just supposed to be a jump-start.’ 36 It’s
a remarkable pattern. The United States has a long record of
bombing nations, reducing entire neighborhoods, and much of
cities, to rubble, wrecking the infrastructure, ruining the lives
of those the bombs didn’t kill. And afterward doing shockingly
little or literally nothing to repair the damage.

On January 27, 1973, in Paris, the United States signed the
‘Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam.’
Among the principles to which the United States agreed was that
stated in Article 21: ‘In pursuance of its traditional [jic] policy,
the United States will contribute to healing the wounds of war
and to postwar reconstruction of the Democratic Republic of
Vietnam [North Vietnam] and throughout Indochina.’

Five days later, President Nixon sent a message to the
Prime Minister of North Vietnam in which he stipulated the
following:

IRAQ

(1) The Government of the United States of America will con-
tribute to postwar reconstruction in North Vietnam without any
political conditions. (2) Preliminary United States studies indicate
that the appropriate programs for the United States contribution
to postwar reconstruction will fall in the range of $3.25 billion of
grant aid over 5 years.

Nothing of the promised reconstruction aid was ever paid, or
ever will be.

During the same period, Laos and Cambodia were wasted by
US bombing as relentlessly as was Vietnam. After the Indochina
wars were over, these nations, too, qualified to become beneficia-
ries of America’s ‘traditional policy’ of zero reconstruction.

Then came the American bombings of Grenada and Panama
in the 1980s. There goes our neighborhood. Hundreds of Pana-
manians petitioned the Washington-controlled Organization of
American States as well as American courts, all the way up to the
US Supreme Court, for ‘just compensation’ for the damage caused
by Operation Just Cause (this being the not-tongue-in-cheek name
given to the American invasion and bombing). They got just
nothing, the same amount the people of Grenada received.

In 1998, Washington, in its grand wisdom, fired more than a
dozen cruise missiles into a building in Sudan, which it claimed
was producing chemical and biological weapons. The completely
pulverized building was actually a major pharmaceuticals plant,
vital to the Sudanese people. The United States effectively admit-
ted its mistake by releasing the assets of the plant’s owner it had
frozen. Surely now it was compensation time. It appears that
nothing has ever been paid to the owner, who filed suit, or to
those injured in the bombing. 37

The following year we had the case of Yugoslavia; seventy-
eight days of round-the-clock bombing, transforming an advanced
state into virtually a pre-industrial one; the reconstruction needs
were breathtaking. In all the years since Yugoslavian bridges fell

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

into the Danube, the country’s factories and homes leveled, its
roads made unusable, transportation torn apart ... the country
has not received any funds for reconstruction from the architect
and leading perpetrator of the bombing campaign, the United
States.

The day after the above announcement about the US ending
its reconstruction efforts in Iraq, it was reported that the United
States is phasing out its commitment to reconstruction in Af-
ghanistan as well. 38 This after several years of the usual launching
of bombs and missiles on towns and villages, resulting in the
usual wreckage and ruin.

The fairy tale behind the war

(December 6, 2005)

As it became apparent that the US war in Iraq was an embarrassing
tragedy, there were lots of accusations going around between the
Democrats and the Republicans, followed by counter-accusations,
congressional investigations, demands for more investigations...
Who said what? When did they say it? How did it contribute to
the buildup for war?... intelligence failures, the administration
should have known, we were misled, they lied, but the Democrats
believed it also, voted for it. . . round and round it goes, back and
forth, what passes for serious parliamentary debate in the US of
A in the twenty-hrst century. . .

It’s time once again to remind ourselves of the big lie, the
biggest lie of all, the lie that makes this whole controversy rather
irrelevant. For it didn’t matter if Iraq had weapons of mass de-
struction, it didn’t matter if the intelligence was right or wrong,
or whether the Bush administration lied about the weapons, or
who believed the lies and who didn’t. All that mattered was the
Bush administration’s claim that Iraq was a threat to use the
weapons against the United States, an imminent threat to wreak

IRAQ

great havoc upon America - ‘Increasingly we believe the United
States will become the target of those [Iraqi nuclear] activities,’
declared Vice President Cheney six months before the invasion,
as but one example. 39

Think about that. What possible reason could Saddam Hussein
have had for attacking the United States other than an irresist-
ible desire for mass national suicide? ‘Oh,’ some people might
argue, ‘he was so crazy, who knew what he might have done?’
But when it became obvious in late 2002 that the US was intent
upon invading Iraq, Saddam opened up the country to the UN
weapons inspectors much more than ever before, with virtually
full cooperation. This was not the behavior of a crazy person;
this was the behavior of a survivalist. He didn’t even use those
weapons when he was invaded in 1991 when he certainly had
some of them. Moreover, we now know that Iraq had put out
peace feelers in early 2003 hoping to prevent the war. 40 They
were not crazy at all.

No, the United States didn’t invade Iraq because of any threat
of an attack using WMD. Nor can it be argued that mere posses-
sion of such weapons - or the belief of same - was reason enough
to take action, for then the United States would have to invade
Russia, France, Israel et al.

The elephant in Saddam Hussein’s courtroom

(November 10, 2005)

The trial of Saddam Hussein has begun. He is charged with the
deaths of more than 140 people who were executed after gunmen
bred on his motorcade in the predominantly Shiite Muslim town
of Dujail, north of Baghdad, in an attempt to assassinate him
in 1982. This appears to be the only crime he’s being tried for.
Yet for a few years now we’ve been hearing about how Saddam
used chemical weapons against ‘his own people’ in the town

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

of Halabja in March 1988. (Actually, the people were Kurds,
who could be regarded as Saddam’s ‘own people’ only if the
Seminoles were President Andrew Jackson’s own people.) The
Bush administration never tires of repeating that line to us. As
recently as October 21, Karen Hughes, White House envoy for
public diplomacy, told an audience in Indonesia that Saddam had
‘used weapons of mass destruction against his own people. He
had murdered hundreds of thousands of his own people using
poison gas.’ When challenged about the number, Hughes replied:
‘It’s something that our U.S. government has said a number of
times in the past. It’s information that was used very widely after
his attack on the Kurds. I believe it was close to 300,000. That’s
something I said every day in the course of the campaign. That’s
information that we talked about a great deal in America.’ The
State Department later corrected Hughes, saying the number of
victims in Halabja was about 5,ooo. 41 (This figure, too, may well
have been inflated for political reasons; for at least the next six
months following the Halabja attack one could find the casualty
count being reported in major media as ‘hundreds’, even by Iran
with whom Iraq was at war from 1981 to 1988; then, somehow,
it ballooned to ‘ 5 ,ooo.’ 42 )

It should be noted, incidentally, that Abraham Lincoln did in
fact kill his own people in the American Civil war, hundreds of
thousands of them! Given the repeated administration emphasis
of the Halabja event, one would think that it would be the charge
used in the court against Saddam. Well, I can think of two
reasons why the US would be reluctant to bring that matter to
court. One, the evidence for the crime has always been somewhat
questionable; for example, at one time an arm of the Pentagon
issued a report suggesting that it was actually Iran which had
used the poison gas in Halabja. 43 And two, the United States, in
addition to providing Saddam abundant financial and intelligence
support, supplied him with lots of materials to help Iraq achieve

IRAQ

its chemical and biological weapons capability; it would be kind
of awkward if Saddam’s defense raised this issue in the court. But
the United States has carefully orchestrated the trial to exclude
any unwanted testimony, including the well-known fact that not
long after the 1982 carnage Saddam is being charged with, in
December 1983, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - perfectly
well informed about the Iraqi regime’s methods and the use of
chemical weapons against Iranian troops - arrived in Baghdad,
sent by Ronald Reagan with the objective of strengthening the
relationship between the two countries. 44 There are photos and
him available depicting the warm greetings extended to each other
by Saddam and Rumsfeld.

War is peace, occupation is sovereignty

(October 17, 2005)

The town of Rawa in Northern Iraq is occupied. The United
States has built an army outpost there to cut off the supply
of foreign fighters purportedly entering Iraq from Syria. The
Americans engage in house searches, knocking in doors,
summary detentions, road blocks, air strikes, and other tactics
highly upsetting to the people of Rawa. Recently, the commander
of the outpost, Lt. Col. Mark Davis, addressed a crowd of 300
angry people. ‘We’re not going anywhere,’ he told the murmuring
citizens. ‘Some of you are concerned about the attack helicopters
and mortar fire from the base,’ he said. ‘I will tell you this:
those are the sounds of peace. 545 He could have said, making as
much sense, that they were the sounds of sovereignty. Iraq is a
sovereign nation, Washington assures us, particularly in these
days of the constitutional referendum, although the vote will
do nothing to empower the Iraqis to relieve their daily misery,
serving only a public relations function for the United States. The
votes, it should be noted, were counted on an American military

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

base; and on the day of the referendum American warplanes
and helicopters were busy killing some seventy people around
the city of Rarnadi . 46

The British also insist that Iraq is a sovereign nation. Recently,
hundreds of residents filled the streets in the southern city of
Basra, shouting and pumping their fists in the air to condemn
British forces for raiding a jail and freeing two British soldiers.
Iraqi police had arrested the Britons, who were dressed as civil-
ians, for allegedly firing their guns (at whom or what is not clear),
and either trying to plant explosives or having explosives in their
vehicle. British troops then assembled several armored vehicles,
rammed them through the jailhouse wall, and freed the men, as
helicopter gunships hovered above . 47

An intriguing side question: we have here British soldiers
dressed as civilians (at least one report said dressed as Arabs),
driving around in a car with explosives, firing guns... Does
this not feed into the frecjuent speculation that coalition forces
have been to some extent part of the ‘insurgency’? The same
insurgency that’s used as an excuse by the coalition to remain
in Iraq?

AFGHANISTAN

Please tell me again... what is the war in Afghanistan about?

(February 3, 2012)

With the US war in Iraq supposedly having reached a good
conclusion (or halfway decent. . . or better than nothing. . . or let’s
get the hell out of here while some of us are still in one piece
and there are some Iraqis we haven’t yet killed), the best and
the brightest in our government and media turn their thoughts
to what to do about Afghanistan. It appears that no one seems to
remember, if they ever knew, that Afghanistan was not really about
9/11 or fighting terrorists (except the many the US has created by
its invasion and occupation), but was about pipelines.

President Obama declared in August 2009:

But we must never forget this is not a war of choice. This is a war
of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9-11 are plotting to
do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an
even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more
Americans. 1

Never mind that out of the tens of thousands of people the United
States and its NATO front have killed in Afghanistan not one has
been identified as having had anything to do with the events of
September 11, 2001.

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

Never mind that the ‘plotting to attack America’ in 2001 was
carried out in Germany and Spain and the United States more
than in Afghanistan. Why hasn’t the United States attacked those
countries?

Indeed, what actually was needed to plot to buy airline tickets
and take flying lessons in the United States? A room with some
chairs? What does ‘an even larger safe haven’ mean? A larger
room with more chairs? Perhaps a blackboard? Terrorists intent
upon attacking the United States can meet almost anywhere.

The only ‘necessity’ that drew the United States to Afghanistan
was the desire to establish a military presence in this land that is
next door to the Caspian Sea region of Central Asia - which re-
portedly contains the second largest proven reserves of petroleum
and natural gas in the world - and build oil and gas pipelines
from that region running through Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is well situated for oil and gas pipelines to serve
much of South Asia, pipelines that can bypass those not-yet
Washington clients Iran and Russia. If only the Taliban would not
attack the lines. Here’s Richard Boucher, US Assistant Secretary
of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, in 2007: ‘One of our
goals is to stabilize Afghanistan, so it can become a conduit and
a hub between South and Central Asia so that energy can flow to
the south.’ 2

Since the 1980s all kinds of pipelines have been planned for
the area, only to be delayed or canceled by one military, financial,
or political problem or another. For example, the so-called TAPI
pipeline (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) had strong
support from Washington, which was eager to block a competing
pipeline that would bring gas to Pakistan and India from Iran.
TAPI goes back to the late 1990s, when the Taliban government
held talks with the California-based oil company Unocal Corpora-
tion. These talks were conducted with the full knowledge of the
Clinton administration, and were undeterred by the extreme

AFGHANISTAN

repression of Taliban society. Taliban officials even made trips
to the United States for discussions.’ Testifying before the House
Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific on February 12, 1998,
Unocal representative John Maresca discussed the importance
of the pipeline project and the increasing difficulties in dealing
with the Taliban:

The region’s total oil reserves may well reach more than 60 billion
barrels of oil. Some estimates are as high as 200 billion barrels ...
From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of the
pipeline we have proposed across Afghanistan could not begin
until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of
governments, leaders, and our company.

When those talks stalled in July, 2001 the Bush administration
threatened the Taliban with military reprisals if the government
did not go along with American demands. The talks finally broke
down for good the following month, a month before 9/11.

The United States has been serious indeed about the Caspian
Sea and Persian Gulf oil and gas areas. Through one war or
another beginning with the Gulf War of 1990-91, the US has
managed to establish military bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait,
Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Ta-
jikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan.

The war against the Taliban can’t be ‘won’ short of killing
everyone in Afghanistan. The United States may well try again to
negotiate some form of pipeline security with the Taliban, then
get out, and declare ‘victory.’ Barack Obama can surely deliver an
eloquent victory speech from his teleprompter. It might include the
words ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy,’ but certainly not ‘pipeline.’

What it’s about for Germany

The German president, Horst Koehler, resigned in June 2010
because lie said something government officials are not supposed

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

to say. He said that Germany was fighting in Afghanistan for
economic reasons. No reference to democracy. Nothing about
freedom. Not a word about Good Guys fighting Bad Guys. The
word ‘terrorism’ was not mentioned at all. Neither was ‘God.’
On a trip to German troops in Afghanistan he had declared
that a country such as Germany, dependent on exports and free
trade, must be prepared to use military force. The country, he
said, had to act ‘to protect our interests, for example free trade
routes, or to prevent regional instability which might certainly
have a negative effect on our trade, jobs and earnings.’

‘Koehler has said something openly that has been obvious from
the beginning,’ said the head of Germany’s Left Party. ‘German
soldiers are risking life and limb in Afghanistan to defend the
export interests of big economic interests.’ 4 Other opposition
politicians had called for Koehler to take back the remarks and
accused him of damaging public acceptance of German military
missions abroad. 5

As T.S. Eliot famously observed: ‘Humankind cannot bear
very much reality.’

The myths of Afghanistan,
past and present

On the Fourth of July, 2009 Senator Patrick Leahy declared he
was optimistic that, unlike the Soviet forces that were driven from
Afghanistan twenty years ago, US forces could succeed there. The
Democrat from Vermont stated:

The Russians were sent running as they should have been. We
helped send them running. But they were there to conquer the
country. We’ve made it very clear, and everybody I talk to within
Afghanistan feels the same way: they know we’re there to help and
we’re going to leave. We’ve made it very clear we are going to leave.

AFGHANISTAN

And it’s going to be turned back to them. The ones that made the
mistakes in the past are those that tried to conquer them . 6

Leahy is a long-time liberal on foreign-policy issues, a champion
of withholding US counter-narcotics assistance from foreign
military units guilty of serious human-rights violations, and an
outspoken critic of robbing terrorist suspects of their human
and legal rights. Yet he was willing to send countless young
Americans to a horrible death, or maimed survival. And for what?
Every point he made in his statement was simply wrong.

The Russians were not in Afghanistan to conquer it. The
Soviet Union had lived next door to the country for more than
sixty years without any kind of invasion. It was only when the
United States intervened in Afghanistan to replace a government
friendly to Moscow with one militantly anti-communist that the
Russians invaded to do battle with the US-supported Islamic
jihadists; precisely what the United States would have done to
prevent a communist government in Canada or Mexico.

As to the US leaving. . . utterly meaningless propaganda until
it happens. Ask the people of South Korea - fifty-six years of
American occupation and still counting; ask the people of Japan
- sixty-four years. It’s not even correct to say that the Russians
were sent running. That was essentially Russian president Mikhail
Gorbachev’s decision, and it was more of a political decision than
a military one. Gorbachev’s fondest ambition was to turn the
Soviet Union into a West European-style social democracy, and he
fervently wished for the approval of those European leaders, virtu-
ally all of whom were Cold War anti-communists and opposed
the Soviet intervention into Afghanistan.

It’s also rather difficult for the United States to claim that it’s
in Afghanistan to help the people there when one considers all
the harm and suffering it has already inflicted upon those utterly
downtrodden people for more than thirty years.

8 4

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

The eternal struggle

between the good guys and the bad guys

The United States and its wholly owned subsidiary NATO regu-
larly drop bombs on Afghanistan which kill varying amounts of
terrorists (or ‘terrorists,’ also known as civilians, also known as
women and children). They do this rather often, against people
utterly defenseless against aerial attack.

US/NATO spokespersons tell us that these unfortunate ac-
cidents happen because the enemy is deliberately putting civilians
in harm’s way to provoke a backlash against the foreign forces.
We are told at times that the enemy had located themselves in
the same building as the victims, using them as ‘human shields .’ 7
Therefore, it would seem, the enemy somehow knows in advance
that a particular building is about to be bombed and they rush
a bunch of civilians to the spot before the bombs begin to fall.
Or it’s a place where civilians normally live and, finding out that
the building is about to be bombed, the enemy rushes a group of
their own people to the place so they can die with the civilians.
Or, what appears to be much more likely, the enemy doesn’t
know of the bombing in advance, but then the civilians would
have to always be there - that is, they live there; they may even
be the wives and children of the enemy. Is there no limit to the
evil cleverness and the clever evilness of this foe?

Western officials also tell us that the enemy deliberately attacks
from civilian areas, even hoping to draw fire to drive a wedge
between average Afghans and international troops . 8 Presumably
the insurgents are attacking nearby Western military installations
and troop concentrations. This raises the question: why are the
Western forces building installations and/or concentrating troops
near civilian areas, deliberately putting civilians in harm’s way?

US/NATO military leaders argue that any comparison
of casualties caused by Western forces and by the Taliban is

AFGHANISTAN

fundamentally unfair because there is a clear moral distinction
to be made between accidental deaths resulting from combat
operations and deliberate killings of innocents by militants. ‘No
[Western] soldier ever wakes up in the morning with the inten-
tion of harming any Afghan citizen,’ said Major John Thomas, a
spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance
Force. ‘If that does inadvertently happen, it is deeply, deeply re-
gretted.’ 9 Is that not comforting language? Can any right-thinking,
sensitive person fail to see who the good guys are?

During its many bombings, from Vietnam to Iraq, Washington
has repeatedly told the world that the resulting civilian deaths
were accidental and very much ‘regretted.’ But if you go out and
drop powerful bombs over a populated area, and then learn that
there have been a number of ‘unintended’ casualties, and then
the next day go out and drop more bombs and learn again that
there were ‘unintended’ casualties, and then the next day you go
out and bomb again... at what point do you lose the right to say
that the deaths were ‘unintended’?

During the US/NATO seventy-eight-day bombing of Serbia
in 1999, which killed many civilians, a Belgrade office building
- which housed political parties, television and radio stations, a
hundred private companies, and more - was bombed. But before
the missiles were fired into this building, NATO planners spelled
out the risks: ‘Casualty Estimate 50-100 Government/Party em-
ployees. Unintended Civ Casualty Est: 250 - Apts in expected
blast radius.’ 10 The planners were saying that about 250 civilians
living in nearby apartment buildings could be expected to perish
in the bombing, in addition to 50 to 100 government and political
party employees, likewise innocent of any crime calling for execu-
tion. So what do we have here? We have grown men telling each
other: We’ll do A, and we think that B may well be the result.
But even if B does in fact result, we’re saying beforehand - as
we’ll insist afterward - that it was unintended.

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

It was actually worse than this. As I’ve detailed elsewhere, the
main purpose of the Serbian bombings - admitted to by NATO
officials - was to make life so difficult for the public that support
of the government of Slobodan Milosevic would be undermined. 11
This, in fact, is the classic definition of ‘terrorism’, as used by
the FBI, the CIA, and the United Nations: the use or threat of
violence against a civilian population to induce the government
to change certain policies.

The women: their last great chance

In their need to defend the US occupation of Afghanistan, many
Americans have cited the severe oppression of women in that
desperate land and would have us believe that the United States
is the last great hope of those poor women. However, in the 1980s
the United States played an indispensable role in the overthrow
of a secular and relatively progressive Afghan government, one
which endeavored to grant women much more freedom than
they’ll ever have under the current government, more perhaps
than ever again. Here are some excerpts from a 1986 US Army
manual on Afghanistan discussing the policies of this government
concerning women: ‘provisions of complete freedom of choice of
marriage partner, and fixation of the minimum age at marriage at
16 for women and 18 for men’; ‘abolished forced marriages’; ‘bring
[women] out of seclusion, and initiate social programs’; ‘extensive
literacy programs, especially for women’; ‘putting girls and boys
in the same classroom’; ‘concerned with changing gender roles
and giving women a more active role in politics.’ 12

The overthrow of this government paved the way for the
coming to power of an Islamic fundamentalist regime, soon in
the hands of the awful Taliban. And why did the United States
in its infinite wisdom choose to do such a thing? Mainly because
the Afghan government was allied with the Soviet Union and

AFGHANISTAN

Washington wanted to draw the Russians into a hopeless military
quagmire. The women of Afghanistan will never know how the
campaign to raise them to the status of full human beings would
have turned out, but this, some might argue, is but a small price
to pay for a marvelous Cold War victory.

IRAN

A designer monster: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

(December 17, 2006)

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a man seemingly
custom-made for any American administration in its endless quest
for enemies with whom to scare Congress, the American people,
and the world, in order to justify the cost and questionable behav-
ior of the empire. We’ve been told, repeatedly, that Ahmadinejad
has declared that he wants to ‘wipe Israel off the map’; that he
claims the Holocaust never happened; that he held a conference
in Iran for ‘Holocaust deniers’; and that his government passed a
law requiring Jews to wear a yellow insignia, a la Nazis. On top
of all that, we are told, he’s aiming to build nuclear bombs, one
of which would surely be aimed at Israel. What decent person
would not be alarmed by such a man?

However, as with all such designer monsters made bigger
than life during the Cold War and since by Washington, the
truth about Ahmadinejad is a bit more complicated. According
to people who know Farsi, the Iranian leader has never said
anything about ‘wiping Israel off the map.’ In his October 29,
2005 speech, when he reportedly first made the remark, the word
‘map’ does not even appear. According to the translation of Juan

IRAN

Cole, American professor of Modern Middle East and South
Asian History, Ahmadinejad said that ‘the regime occupying
Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.’ His remark, said
Cole, ‘does not imply military action or killing anyone at all,’
which presumably is what would make the remark threatening. 1

At the December 2006 conference, Ahmadinejad declared: ‘The
Zionist regime will be wiped out soon, the same way the Soviet
Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom.’ 2 Obviously, the
man is not calling for any kind of violent attack upon Israel, for
the dissolution of the Soviet Union took place peacefully.

As for the Holocaust myth, I have yet to read or hear words
from Ahnradinejad’s mouth saying simply and clearly and un-
equivocally that he thinks that what we know as the Holocaust
never happened. Indeed, it would be difficult to find any so-called
‘Holocaust-denier’ who actually, ever, umm, y’know. .. denies
the Holocaust. (Yes, I’m sure you can find at least one nutcase
somewhere.)

The Iranian president has commented about the peculiarity
of a Holocaust which took place in Europe resulting in a state
for the Jews in the Middle East instead of in Europe. Why are
the Palestinians paying a price for a German crime? he asks.
He also wonders about the accuracy of the number of Jews - 6
million - killed in the Holocaust, as have many other people of all
political stripes, including Holocaust survivors like author Primo
Levi. (The much publicized World War I atrocities which turned
out to be false made the public very skeptical of the Holocaust
claims for a long time.)

In a talk at Columbia University, September 24, 2007, Ahmad-
inejad said: ‘I’m not saying that it [the Holocaust] didn’t happen at
all. This is not the judgment that I’m passing here.’ 3 That should
have put the matter to rest. But of course it didn’t. Two days later,
September 26, a bill (H.R. 3675) was introduced in Congress ‘To
prohibit Federal grants to or contracts with Columbia University’,

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

to punish the school for inviting Ahmadinejad to speak. (Don’t
you just love the way members of Congress love freedom of
speech?) The bill’s Erst ‘finding’ states that ‘Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for the destruction of the State
of Israel, a critical ally of the United States.’ That same day, televi-
sion comedian Jay Leno had great fun ridiculing Ahmadinejad
for denying that the Holocaust ever happened ‘despite all the
eye-witness accounts.’

The conference in Tehran (‘Review of the Holocaust: Global
Vision’) gave a platform to various points of view, including
six members of Jews United Against Zionism, at least two of
whom were rabbis. One was Ahron Cohen, from London, who
declared: ‘There is no doubt whatsoever, that during World War
II there developed a terrible and catastrophic policy and action
of genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany against the Jewish
People.’ He also said that ‘the Zionists make a great issue of
the Holocaust in order to further their illegitimate philosophy
and aims,’ indicating as well that the figure of 6 million Jewish
victims is debatable. The other rabbi was Moshe David Weiss,
who told the delegates: ‘We don’t want to deny the killing of Jews
in World War II, but Zionists have given much higher figures for
how many people were killed. They have used the Holocaust as a
device to justify their oppression [of the Palestinians].’ His group
rejects the creation of Israel on the grounds that it violates Jewish
religious law in that a Jewish state can’t exist until the return of
the Messiah. 4

Another speaker was Shiraz Dossa, professor of political
science at St Francis Xavier University in Canada. In an interview
after the conference, he described himself as an anti-imperialist
and an admirer of Noam Chomsky, and said that he ‘was invited
because of my expertise as a scholar in the German-Jewish area,

as well as my studies in the Holocaust I have nothing to

do with Holocaust denial, not at all.’ His talk was ‘about the

IRAN

war on terrorism, and how the Holocaust plays into it. Other
people [at the conference] have their own points of view, but
that [Holocaust denial] is not my point of view. . . . There was
no pressure at all to say anything, and people there had different
views.’ 5 Clearly, the conference - which the White House called
‘an affront to the entire civilized world’ 6 - was not set up to be
simply a forum for people to deny that the Holocaust ever took
place at all.

As to the yellow star story - that was a complete fabrication
by a prominent Iranian- American neoconservative, Amir Taheri.
There are further egregious examples of Ahmadinejad’s policies
and words being twisted out of shape in the Western media,
making him look like a danger to all that’s holy and decent. Politi-
cal science professor Virginia Tilley has written a good account of
this. ‘Why is Mr. Ahmadinejad being so systematically misquoted
and demonized?’ Tilley asks. ‘Need we ask? If the world believes
that Iran is preparing to attack Israel, then the US or Israel can
claim justification in attacking Iran first. On that agenda, the
disinformation campaign about Mr Ahmadinejad’s statements has
been bonded at the hip to a second set of lies: promoting Iran’s
(nonexistent) nuclear weapon programme.’ 7

Time magazine, in its 2006 year-ending issue, chose not to
select its usual ‘Person of the Year’ and instead chose ‘You,’ the
Internet user. Managing editor Richard Stengel said that if it came
down to one individual it probably would have been Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, but that ‘It just felt to me a little off selecting him.’ 8
In previous years Time’s ‘Person of the Year’ has included Joseph
Stalin and Adolf Hitler.

One closing thought: if Ahmadinejad is anywhere near the
bete noire anti-Semite he’s portrayed as, why hasn’t Iran at least
started its holocaust by killing or throwing into concentration
camps its own Jews, an estimated 30,000 in number? These are
Iranian Jews who have representation in parliament and who have

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

been free for many years to emigrate to Israel but have chosen
not to do so.

What you need to succeed is sincerity, and if you can fake
sincerity you’ve got it made (Old Hollywood axiom)

A few months ago I told the American people that I did not trade
arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me
that is true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not. (President
Ronald Reagan, 1987 9 )

On April 23, 2012, speaking at the Holocaust Memorial Museum
in Washington, DC, President Barack Obama told his assembled
audience that, as president, ‘I’ve done my utmost ... to prevent
and end atrocities.’ Do the facts and evidence tell him that his
words are not true?

Well, let’s see... There are the multiple atrocities carried out
in Iraq by American forces under President Obama. There are
the multiple atrocities carried out in Afghanistan by American
forces under Obama. There are the multiple atrocities carried
out in Pakistan by American forces under Obama. There are
the multiple atrocities carried out in Libya by American/NATO
forces under Obama. There are also the hundreds (thousands
by now?) of American drone attacks against people and homes
in Somalia and in Yemen (including against American citizens
in the latter). Might the friends and families of these victims
regard the murder of their loved ones and the loss of their homes
as atrocities?

Ronald Reagan was pre-Alzheimer’s when he uttered the above.
What excuse can be made for Barack Obama?

The president then continued in the same fashion by saying
‘We possess many tools... and using these tools over the past
three years, I believe - I know - that we have saved countless lives.’
Obama pointed out that this includes Libya, where the United

IRAN

States, in conjunction with NATO, took part in seven months of
almost daily bombing missions. We may never learn from the new
pro-NATO Libyan government how many the bombs killed, or the
extent of the damage to homes and infrastructure. But the president
of the United States assured his Holocaust Museum audience that
‘today, the Libyan people are forging their own future, and the
world can take pride in the innocent lives that we saved.’

Language is an invention that makes it possible for a person
to deny what he is doing even as he does it.

Mr. Obama closed with these stirring words; ‘It can be tempt-
ing to throw up our hands and resign ourselves to man’s endless
capacity for cruelty. It’s tempting sometimes to believe that there
is nothing we can do.’ But Barack Obama is not one of those
doubters. He knows there is something he can do about man’s
endless capacity for cruelty. He can add to it. Greatly. And yet
I am certain that, with exceedingly few exceptions, those in his
Holocaust audience left with no doubt that this was a man wholly
deserving of his Nobel Peace Prize.

And future American history books may well certify the
president’s words as factual, his motivation sincere, for his talk
indeed possessed the quality needed for schoolbooks.

The Israeli-American-Iranian-Holocaust-NobelPeacePrize
circus

Everyone now knows it. In 2005 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threat-
ened violence against Israel, to ‘wipe Israel off the map.’ Who can
count the number of times it has been repeated in every kind of
media, in every country of the world, without questioning the
accuracy of what was reported? A 2012 Lexis-Nexis search of
‘All News (English)’ for <Iran and Israel and ‘off the map’> for
the previous seven years produced the message: ‘This search has
been interrupted because it will return more than 3000 results.’

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

Now, finally, we have the following exchange from the radio-
television simulcast, Democracy Now!, of April 19, 2012:

A top Israeli official has acknowledged that Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never said that Iran seeks to ‘wipe Israel
off the face of the map.’ The falsely translated statement has been
widely attributed to Ahmadinejad and used repeatedly by U.S. and
Israeli government officials to back military action and sanctions
against Iran. But speaking to Teymoor Nabili of the network Al
Jazeera, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor admitted
Ahmadinejad had been misquoted.

teymoor nabili: As we know, Ahmadinejad didn’t say that he
plans to exterminate Israel, nor did he say that Iran policy is to
exterminate Israel. Ahmadinejad’s position and Iran’s position
always has been, and they’ve made this - they’ve said this as many
times as Ahmadinejad has criticized Israel, he has said as many
times that he has no plans to attack Israel. ...

dan meridor: Well, I have to disagree, with all due respect.

You speak of Ahmadinejad. I speak of Khamenei, Ahmadinejad,
Rafsanjani, Shamkhani. I give the names of all these people. They
all come, basically ideologically, religiously, with the statement
that Israel is an unnatural creature, it will not survive. They didn’t
say, ‘We’ll wipe it out,’ you’re right. But ‘It will not survive, it is a
cancerous tumor that should be removed,’ was said just two weeks
ago again.

teymoor nabili: ‘Well, I’m glad you’ve acknowledged that they
didn’t say they will wipe it out.’

So that’s that. Right? Of course not. Fox News, NPR, CNN,
NBC et al. will likely continue to claim that Ahmadinejad
threatened violence against Israel, threatened to ‘wipe it off the
map.’ And that’s only Ahmadinejad the Israeli Killer. There’s
still Ahmadinejad the Holocaust Denier, which we’ve seen has
no basis in reality.

Let us now listen to Elie Wiesel, the simplistic, reactionary
man who’s built a career around being a Holocaust survivor,

IRAN

introducing President Obama at the Holocaust Museum for the
talk referred to above, some five days after the statement made
by Dan Meridor:

How is it that the Holocaust’s No. 1 denier, Ahmadinejad, is
still a president? He who threatens to use nuclear weapons - to
use nuclear weapons - to destroy the Jewish state. Have we not
learned? We must. We must know that when evil has power, it is
almost too late.

‘Nuclear weapons’ is of course adding a new myth on the back
of the old myths.

Wiesel, like Obama, is a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
As is Henry Kissinger and Menachim Begin. And several other
such war-loving beauties. Tom Lehrer, the marvelous political
songwriter of the 1950s and 1960s, once observed: ‘Political satire
became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize.’ When will that monumental farce of a prize be put
to sleep?

For the record, let it be noted that on March 4, 2002, speaking
before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC),
Obama said: ‘Let’s begin with a basic truth that you all under-
stand: No Israeli government can tolerate a nuclear weapon in the
hands of a regime that denies the Holocaust, threatens to wipe
Israel off the map, and sponsors terrorist groups committed to
Israel’s destruction.’ 10

The Lord High Almighty Pooh-Bah of threats,
the Grand Ayatollah of nuclear menace

(February 3, 2012)

As we all know only too well, the United States and Israel would
hate to see Iran possessing nuclear weapons. Being ‘the only
nuclear power in the Middle East’ is a great card for Israel to

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

have in its hand. But - in the real, non-propaganda world - is
USrael actually fearful of an attack from a nuclear-armed Iran?
In case you’ve forgotten. . .

In 2007, in a closed discussion, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi
Livni said that in her opinion ‘Iranian nuclear weapons do not
pose an existential threat to Israel.’ She ‘also criticized the exag-
gerated use that [Israeli] Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making
of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting
to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic
fears.’ 11

2009: ‘A senior Israeli official in Washington’ asserted that
‘Iran would be unlikely to use its missiles in an attack [against
Israel] because of the certainty of retaliation.’ 12

In 2010 the Sunday Times (January 10) reported that Brigadier-
General Uzi Eilam, war hero, pillar of the Israeli defense estab-
lishment, and former director general of Israel’s Atomic Energy
Commission, ‘believes it will probably take Iran seven years to
make nuclear weapons.’

January 2012, US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told a
television audience: Are they [Iran] trying to develop a nuclear
weapon? No, but we know that they trying to develop a nuclear
capability.’ 13

A week later we could read in the New York Times (January
15) that ‘three leading Israeli security experts - the Mossad chief,
Tamir Pardo, a former Mossad chief, Efraim Halevy, and a former
military chief of staff, Dan Halutz - all recently declared that a
nuclear Iran would not pose an existential threat to Israel.’

Then, a few days afterward, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud
Barak, in an interview with Israeli Army Radio (January 18),
had this exchange:

question: Is it Israel’s judgment that Iran has not yet decided to

turn its nuclear potential into weapons of mass destruction?

IRAN

barak: People ask whether Iran is determined to break out from
the control [inspection] regime right now ... in an attempt to
obtain nuclear weapons or an operable installation as quickly as
possible. Apparently that is not the case.

Lastly, we have the US Director of National Intelligence, James
Clapper, in a report to Congress: ‘We do not know, however, if

Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons There

are ‘certain things [the Iranians] have not done’ that would be
necessary to build a warhead. 14

Admissions like the above - and there are others - are never
put into headlines by the American mass media; indeed, they are
only very lightly reported at all; and sometimes distorted. On the
Public Broadcasting System (PBS News Hour , January 9), the
non-commercial network much beloved by American liberals,
the Panetta quotation above was reported as: ‘But we know that
they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability, and that’s what
concerns us.’ Flagrantly omitted were the preceding words: ‘Are
they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No...’ 15

One of Israel’s leading military historians, Martin van Creveld,
was interviewed by Playboy magazine in June 2007.

playboy: Can the World live with a nuclear Iran?

van creveld: The U.S. has lived with a nuclear Soviet Union and
a nuclear China, so why not a nuclear Iran? I’ve researched how
the U.S. opposed nuclear proliferation in the past, and each time a
country was about to proliferate, the U.S. expressed its opposition
in terms of why this other country was very dangerous and didn’t
deserve to have nuclear weapons. Americans believe they’re the
only people who deserve to have nuclear weapons, because they
are good and democratic and they like Mother and apple pie and
the flag. But Americans are the only ones who have used them. . . .
We are in no danger at all of having an Iranian nuclear weapon
dropped on us. We cannot say so too openly, however, because
we have a history of using any threat in order to get weapons . . .

9 «

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

thanks to the Iranian threat, we are getting weapons from the U.S.

and Germany.

And throughout these years, regularly, Israeli and American of-
ficials have been assuring us that Iran is World Nuclear Threat
Number One, that we can’t relax our guard against them, that
there should be no limit to the ultra-tough sanctions we impose
upon the Iranian people and their government. Repeated murder
and attempted murder of Iranian nuclear scientists, sabotage
of Iranian nuclear equipment with computer viruses, the sale
of faulty parts and raw materials, unexplained plane crashes,
explosions at Iranian facilities . . . Who can be behind all this but
USrael? How do we know? It’s called ‘plain common sense.’ Or
do you think it was Costa Rica? Or perhaps South Africa? Or
maybe Thailand?

Defense Secretary Panetta recently commented succinctly on
one of the assassinations of an Iranian scientist: ‘That’s not what
the United States does .’ 16 Does anyone know Leon Panetta’s email
address? I’d like to send him my list of United States assassination
plots. More than fifty foreign leaders were targeted over the years,
many successfully . 17

Not long ago, Iraq and Iran were regarded by USrael as the
most significant threats to Israeli Middle East hegemony. Thus
was born the myth of Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the
LTnited States proceeded to turn Iraq into a basket case. That left
Iran, and thus was born the myth of the Iranian Nuclear Threat.
As it began to sink in that Iran was not really that much of a
nuclear threat, or that this ‘threat’ was becoming too difficult to
sell to the rest of the world, USrael decided that, at a minimum,
it wanted regime change. The next step may be to block Iran’s
lifeline - oil sales using the Strait of Hormuz. Ergo the recent
LTS and EU naval buildup near the Persian Gulf, an act of war
trying to goad Iran into firing the first shot. If Iran tries to counter

IRAN

this blockade it could be the signal for another US Basket Case,
the fourth in a decade, with the devastated people of Libya and
Afghanistan, along with Iraq, currently enjoying America’s unicjue
gift of freedom and democracy.

On January 11, the Washington Post reported: ‘In addition to
influencing Iranian leaders directly, [a US intelligence official]
says another option here is that [sanctions] will create hate and
discontent at the street level so that the Iranian leaders realize
that they need to change their ways.’ How utterly charming, these
tactics and goals for the twenty-first century by the leader of the
‘Free World.’ (Is that expression still used?)

The neoconservative thinking (and Barack Obama can be
regarded as often being a fellow traveler of such) is even more
charming than that. Consider Danielle Pletka, vice president for
foreign and defense policy studies at America’s most prominent
neocon think tank, American Enterprise Institute:

The biggest problem for the United States is not Iran getting a
nuclear weapon and testing it, it’s Iran getting a nuclear weapon
and not using it. Because the second that they have one and they
don’t do anything bad, all of the naysayers are going to come
back and say, ‘See, we told you Iran is a responsible power. We
told you Iran wasn’t getting nuclear weapons in order to use them
immediately.’ . . . And they will eventually define Iran with nuclear
weapons as not a problem . 18

What are we to make of that and all the other quotations above? I
think it gets back to my opening statement: being ‘the only nuclear
power in the Middle East’ is a great card for Israel to have in its
hand. Is USrael willing to go to war to hold on to that card?

Arab leaders: Arab people

One of the most common threads running through the WikiLeaks
papers is Washington’s manic obsession with Iran. In country

100

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

after country the United States exerts unceasing pressure on the
government to tighten the noose around Iran’s neck, to make
the American sanctions as extensive and as painful as can be, to
inflate the alleged Iranian nuclear threat, to discourage normal
contact as if Iran were a leper.

‘Fear of “different world” if Iran gets nuclear weapons. Embassy
cables reveal how US relentlessly cajoles and bullies governments
not to give succour to Tehran,’ read a Guardian headline on No-
vember 28, 2010. And we’re told that Arab governments support
the United States in this endeavor, that fear of Iran is widespread.
John Kerry, the Democratic head of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, jumped on this bandwagon. ‘Things that I have
heard from the mouths of King Abdullah [of Saudi Arabia] and
Hosni Mubarak [Egyptian president] and others are now quite
public,’ he said. He went on to say there was a ‘consensus on Iran’
(Guardian, December 2). If all this is to have real meaning, the
implication must be that the Arab people feel this way, and not
just their dictator leaders. So let us look at some numbers.

The annual ‘Arab Public Opinion Poll’ was conducted in
summer 2010 by Zogby International and the University of Mary-
land, in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and
the United Arab Emirates. A sample of the results:

• ‘If Iran acquires nuclear weapons, which of the following is
the likely outcome for the Middle East region?’ More positive
57 percent, Would not matter 20 percent, More negative 21
percent.

• Among those who believe that Iran seeks nuclear weapons,
70 percent believe that Iran has the right to its nuclear
program.

• ‘In a world where there is only one superpower, which of the
following countries would you prefer to be that superpower?’
France 35 percent, China 16 percent, Germany 13 percent,

IRAN

101

Britain 9 percent, Russia 8 percent, United States 7 percent,
Pakistan 6 percent.

• ‘Name two countries that you think pose the biggest threat to
you.’ Israel 88 percent, US 77 percent, Algeria 10 percent, Iran
10 percent, UK 8 percent, China 3 percent, Syria 1 percent.

• ‘Which world leader (outside your own country) do you admire
most?’ (partial list) Recep Erdogan [Turkey] 20 percent, Hugo
Chavez 13 percent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 12 percent, Hassan
Nasrallah [Hezbollah/Lebanon] 9 percent, Osama bin Laden
6 percent, Saddam Hussein 2 percent (Barack Obama not
mentioned). 19

Another peace scare. Boy, that was close.

(December 11, 2007)

In 2007, the US intelligence community’s new National Intelligence
Estimate (NIE) - ‘Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities’ - made
a point of saying up front (in bold type) : ‘This NIE does not [stress
in original] assume that Iran intends to acquire nuclear weapons.’
The report goes on to state: ‘We judge with high confidence that
in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.’

Isn’t that good news, that Iran isn’t about to attack the United
States or Israel with nuclear weapons? Surely everyone is thrilled
that the horror and suffering that such an attack - not to mention
an American or Israeli retaliation or pre-emptive attack - would
bring to this old world. Let’s consider some of the happy reactions
from American leaders.

Senate Republicans are planning to call for a congressional
commission to investigate the NIE’s conclusion that Iran discon-
tinued its nuclear weapons program in 2003. 20

National Security Adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, said that the
report ‘tells us that the risk of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon
remains a very serious problem.’ 21

102

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

Defense Secretary Robert Gates ‘argued forcefully at a Persian
Gulf security conference ... that U.S. intelligence indicates Iran
could restart its secret nuclear weapons program “at any time”
and remains a major threat to the region .’ 22

John R. Bolton, President Bush’s former ambassador to the
United Nations and pit bull of the neoconservatives, dismissed
the report with: ‘I’ve never based my view on this week’s
intelligence .’ 23

And Bush himself added:

Look, Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous, and Iran will be
dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear
weapon. The NIE says that Iran had a hidden - a covert nuclear
weapons program. That’s what it said. What’s to say they couldn’t
start another covert nuclear weapons program? ... Nothing has
changed in this NIE that says, ‘Okay, why don’t we just stop wor-
rying about it?’ Quite the contrary. I think the NIE makes it clear
that Iran needs to be taken seriously. My opinion hasn’t changed . 24

Hmmm. Well, maybe the reaction was more positive in Israel.
Here’s a report from Uri Avnery, a leading Israeli columnist:

The earth shook. Our political and military leaders were all
in shock. The headlines screamed with rage. . . . Shouldn’t we
be overjoyed? Shouldn’t the masses in Israel be dancing in the
streets? After all, we have been saved! ... Lo and behold - no
bomb and no any-minute-now. The wicked Ahmadinejad can
threaten us as much as he wants - he just has not got the means to
harm us. Isn’t that a reason for celebration? So why does this feel
like a national disaster ? 25

We have to keep this in mind: America, like Israel, cherishes
its enemies. Without enemies, the United States appears to be a
nation without moral purpose and direction. The various man-
agers of the National Security State need enemies to protect their
jobs, to justify their swollen budgets, to aggrandize their work,
to give themselves a mission, to send truckloads of taxpayer

IRAN

103

money to the corporations for whom the managers will go to
work after leaving government service. They understand the
need for enemies only too well, even painfully. Here is US Col.
Dennis Long, speaking in 1992, just after the end of the Cold
War, when he was director of ‘total armor force readiness’ at
Fort Knox:

For 50 years, we equipped our football team, practiced five days a
week and never played a game. We had a clear enemy with demon-
strable qualities, and we had scouted them out. [Now] we will have
to practice day in and day out without knowing anything about
the other team. We won’t have his playbook, we won’t know where
the stadium is, or how many guys he will have on the field. That is
very distressing to the military establishment, especially when you
are trying to justify the existence of your organization and your
systems. 26

In any event, all of the above is completely irrelevant if Iran has
no intention of attacking the United States or Israel, which would
be the case even if they currently possessed a large stockpile of
nuclear weapons.

Intentional misunderstanding

(November 6, 2007)

International misunderstanding is almost wholly voluntary: it
is that contradiction in terms, intentional misunderstanding - a
contradiction, because in order to misunderstand deliberately, you
must at least suspect, if not actually understand what you intend to
misunderstand. (Enoch Powell, British MP, 1983 27 )

In October 2007, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told as-
sembled world leaders at the United Nations that the time had
come to take action against Iran:

None disagrees that Iran denies the Holocaust and speaks openly
of its desire to wipe a member state - mine - off the map. And

104

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

none disagrees that, in violation of Security Council resolutions, it
is actively pursuing the means to achieve this end. Too many see
the danger but walk idly by - hoping that someone else will take
care of it. ... It is time for the United Nations, and the states of the
world, to live up to their promise of never again. To say enough is
enough, to act now and to defend their basic values. 28

Yet, as mentioned before, we were informed by Haaretz (frequently
described as ‘the New York Times of Israel’) that the same Foreign
Minister Tzipi Livni had said a few months earlier, in a series of
closed discussions, that in her opinion ‘Iranian nuclear weapons
do not pose an existential threat to Israel.’ Haaretz reported that
‘Livni also criticized the exaggerated use that [Israeli] Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb,
claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by
playing on its most basic fears .’ 29 What are we to make of such a
self-contradiction, such perfect hypocrisy?

And here is Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek
International'.

The one time we seriously negotiated with Tehran was in the
closing days of the war in Afghanistan [early 1990s], in order to
create a new political order in the country. Bush’s representative to
the Bonn conference, James Dobbins, says that ‘the Iranians were
very professional, straightforward, reliable and helpful. They were
also critical to our success. They persuaded the Northern Alliance
[Afghan foes of the Taliban] to make the final concessions that we
asked for.’ Dobbins says the Iranians made overtures to have better
relations with the United States through him and others in 2001
and later, but got no reply. Even after the Axis of Evil speech, he
recalls, they offered to cooperate in Afghanistan. Dobbins took
the proposal to a principals meeting in Washington only to have
it met with dead silence. The then-Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld, he says, ‘looked down and rustled his papers.’ No reply
was ever sent back to the Iranians. Why bother? They’re mad. 30

Dobbins has further written:

IRAN

105

The original version of the Bonn agreement ... neglected to men-
tion either democracy or the war on terrorism. It was the Iranian
representative who spotted these omissions and successfully urged
that the newly emerging Afghan government be required to commit
to both . 31

Only weeks after Hamid Karzai was sworn in as interim leader
in Afghanistan, President Bush listed Iran among the ‘axis of
evil’ - surprising payback for Tehran’s help in Bonn. A year later,
shortly after the invasion of Iraq, all bilateral contacts with Tehran
were suspended. Since then, confrontation over Iran’s nuclear
program has intensified . 32

Shortly after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran made another
approach to Washington, via the Swiss ambassador, who sent a
fax to the State Department. The Washington Post described it as
‘a proposal from Iran for a broad dialogue with the United States,
and the fax suggested everything was on the table - including full
cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the
termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups.’
The Bush administration ‘belittled the initiative. Instead, they
formally complained to the Swiss ambassador who had sent the
fax.’ Richard Haass, head of policy planning at the State Depart-
ment at the time and now president of the Council on Foreign
Relations, said the Iranian approach was swiftly rejected because
in the administration ‘the bias was toward a policy of regime
change.’ 33

So there we have it. The Israelis know it, the Americans know
it. Iran is not any kind of military threat. Before the invasion of
Iraq I posed the question: What possible reason would Saddam
Hussein have for attacking the United States or Israel other than
an irresistible desire for mass national suicide? He had no reason,
and neither do the Iranians.

GEORGE W. BUSH

‘Come out of the White House with your hands up!’

(May 21, 2006)

‘I used to be called brother, John, Daddy, uncle, friend,’ John Allen
Muhammad said at his trial in Maryland this month. ‘Now I’m
called evil.’ Muhammad, formerly known as ‘the DC Sniper,’ was
on trial for six slayings in Maryland in 2002. Already sentenced
to die in Virginia for several other murders, he insisted that he
was innocent despite the evidence against him - including DNA,
fingerprints, and ballistics analysis of a rifle found in his car. 1

Bereft of any real political power, I’m reduced to day-
dreaming. . . a courtroom in some liberated part of the world, in
the not-too-distant future, a tribunal... a defendant testifying...
‘I used to be called brother, George, son, Daddy, uncle, friend,
Dubya, governor, president. Now I’m called war criminal,’ he
says sadly, insisting on his innocence despite the overwhelming
evidence presented against him.

Can the man ever take to heart or mind the realization that
America’s immune system is trying to get rid of him? Probably
not. No more than his accomplice can.

In 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney visited Yankee Stadium for
a baseball game. During the singing of ‘God Bless America’ in the
seventh inning, an image of Cheney was shown on the scoreboard.

GEORGE W. BUSH

107

It was greeted with so much booing that the Yankees quickly
removed the image. 2 Yet last month the vice president showed up
at the home opener for the Washington Nationals to throw out the
first pitch. The Washington Post reported that he ‘drew boisterous
boos from the moment he stepped on the held until he jogged
off. The derisive greeting was surprisingly loud and long, given
the bipartisan nature of our national pastime, and drowned out a
smattering of applause reported from the upper decks.’ 3

It will be interesting to see if Cheney shows up again before
a large crowd in a venue which has not been carefully chosen to
insure that only right-thinking folks will be present. Even that
might not help. Twice in the last few months, a public talk of
Donald Rumsfeld has been interrupted by people in the audience
calling him a war criminal and accusing him of lying to get the
United States into war. This happened in a meeting room at the
very respectable National Press Club in Washington and again at a
forum at the equally respectable Southern Center for International
Policy in Atlanta.

In Chile, in November 2005, as former dictator Augusto Pino-
chet moved closer to being tried for the deaths of thousands, he
declared to a judge: ‘I lament those losses and suffer for them.
God does things, and he will forgive me if I committed some
excesses, which I don’t believe I did.’ 4

Dubya couldn’t have said it better. Let’s hope that one day
we can compel him to stand before a judge, not one appointed
by him.

After the war-crimes trial we’ll need a second tribunal
for shameless lying, gross insults to our intelligence,
and just plain weird stupidity and stupid weirdness

George W. Bush, speaking on March 29, 2006 to the Freedom
House organization in Washington:

io8

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

We’re a country of deep compassion. We care. One of the great
things about America, one of the beauties of our country, is that
when we see a young, innocent child blown up by an IED [im-
provised explosive device] , we cry. We don’t care what the child’s
religion may be, or where that child may live, we cry. It upsets us.
The enemy knows that, and they’re willing to kill to shake our
confidence . 5

In the words of Voltaire: ‘Those who can make you believe

absurdities can make you commit atrocities.’

If you sometimes think that the dumbness, lies, hypocrisy,
cynicism, cruelty, and arrogance could never have been
as bad as now...

Here is President George H.W. Bush, in a speech to the US Air
Force Academy, May 29, 1991:

Nowhere are the dangers of weapons of proliferation more urgent
than in the Middle East. After consulting with governments inside
the region and elsewhere about how to slow and then reverse the
buildup of unnecessary and destabilizing weapons, I am today
proposing a Middle East arms control initiative. It features supplier
guidelines on conventional arms exports; barriers to exports that
contribute to weapons of mass destruction; a freeze now, and later
a ban on surface-to-surface missiles in the region; and a ban on
production of nuclear weapons material.

The next day (that is to say the very next day, May 30, 1991),
Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney announced that the United
States would give Israel $65 million worth of US fighter planes
and underwrite most of a new Israeli missile program. 6

In that same speech, Bush, Sr. declared: ‘Our service men and
women in the Gulf, weary from months in the desert, now help
suffering Kurds.’ The truth was that since the Gulf War fighting
had ceased in February, the United States had been doing its
best to suppress the Kurdish revolt against the rule of Saddam

GEORGE W. BUSH

109

Hussein, a revolt which the Bush administration had openly
encouraged for Kurds and Shiites in Washington’s perennial
professed role of democratic liberator; but when the heat of the
moment had cooled down, the prospect of a Kurdish autonomous
area next to US ally Turkey and/or an Iraq-Iran-Shiite coalition
next to the Saudi allies made successful revolts appear unpalatable
to the United States. Accordingly, the Kurds and Shiites were left
to their [not very nice] fates. But hey, that’s business.

Seconds later in his talk, Daddy Bush succeeded in pushing
the following words past his lips: ‘We do not dictate the courses
nations follow.’

Civil liberties holds an important place

in the heart of the Bush administration’s rhetoric

‘This is a limited program designed to prevent attacks on the
United States of America and, I repeat, limited,’ said President
George W. Bush in 2006 about the National Security Agency’s
domestic spying on Americans without a court order. 7 Let’s give
the devil his due. It’s easy to put down the domestic spying
program, but the fact is that the president is right, it is indeed
limited. It’s limited to those who are being spied upon. No one
- I repeat, no one - who is not being spied upon is being spied
upon.

Thomas Jefferson said that the price of freedom is eternal
vigilance. But he of course was talking about citizens watching
the government, not the reverse.

A marriage made in heaven... or in Albania

Former White House counsel Harriet Miers once called George
W. Bush the most brilliant man she has ever known. 8 She’s now
no longer alone in her bizarre little padded cell. On June 10,

110

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

2007 during the president’s visit to Albania - arguably the most
backward country in all of Europe, today as well as when it was
a Soviet satellite - the joyous townspeople of Fushe Kruje yelled
‘Bushie! Bushie!’ and Albania’s prime minister gushed over the
‘greatest and most distinguished guest we have ever had in all
times.’

This was reported by Washington Post columnist Eugene
Robinson, and prompted a letter from a reader, which said in
part: ‘Regarding Eugene Robinson’s June 12 op-ed.... It was
inevitable that somebody would sneer at the Albanian reception
of President Bush ... [Robinson] patronizingly writing of “a
wonderful reverse-Borat moment”.... U.S. support for Albania
following the collapse of communism explains Albanian gratitude
to the United States.’ 9

Ah yes, the wonderful collapse of Communism and the even
more wonderful birth of democracy, freedom, capitalism... and
much increased poverty and deprivation in the former Soviet do-
minion. What actually happened is that the first election in ‘Free
Albania,’ in March 1991, resulted in an overwhelming endorsement
of the Communists. And what did the United States then do? Of
course it proceeded to undertake a campaign to overthrow this
very same elected government. The previous year in neighbor-
ing Bulgaria, another former Soviet satellite, the Communists
also won the election. And the United States overthrew them as
well. 10 These were the Erst of the post-Cold War, non-violent,
overthrows of governments of the former Soviet Union and its
satellites directed and financed by the United States. 11

CONDOLEEZZA RICE

Is the bullshit not enough to murder your brain?

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, testifying on April 5, 2006
before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about a US-India
nuclear pact:

India’s society is open and free. It is transparent and stable. It is
multiethnic. It is a multi-religious democracy that is characterized
by individual freedom and the rule of law. It is a country with
which we share common values. . . . India is a rising global power
that we believe can be a pillar of stability in a rapidly changing
Asia. In other words, in short, India is a natural partner for the
United States.

And here is a State Department human rights report - released
the very same day - that had this to say about India:

The Government generally respected the rights of its citizens and
continued efforts to curb human rights abuses, although numerous
serious problems remained. These included extrajudicial killings,
disappearances, custodial deaths, excessive use of force, arbitrary
arrests, torture, poor prison conditions, and extended pretrial
detention, especially related to combating insurgencies in Jammu
and Kashmir. Societal violence and discrimination against women,
trafficking of women and children for forced prostitution and
labor, and female feticide and infanticide remained concerns. Poor

112

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

enforcement of laws, widespread corruption, a lack of account-
ability, and the severely overburdened court system weakened the
delivery ofjustice.

The Dragon Lady gets hers, a hit

We dissenters, we fringe people in America, we beggars, we do
not get many occasions for public vindication and satisfaction in
the mainstream political arena. The ‘bad guys’ always seem to
come out ahead, and unscathed. Thus did I take some pleasure
on January 18, 2005 to hear Condoleezza Rice verbally slapped
around by Senator Barbara Boxer at the Senate hearings on Rice’s
nomination to be Secretary of State. Boxer documented in detail
several of the very serious lies and contradictions that Rice had
engaged in, in her attempts to justify the Iraq War; nothing that we
dissenters had not reported in countless places some time ago, but
confronting the Dragon Lady to her face was something else.

And now Rice’s voice was clearly strained as she asked that she
be questioned ‘without impugning my credibility or my integrity.’
She proceeded to defend her past remarks and in the process
rewrote yet more history - saying that the no-fly zones, used by
the US and Britain to bomb Iraq repeatedly over the years, had
been authorized by the UN. Not so; it was a joint private creation
of Washington and London. And then she said that the US had
good reason to fear Saddam Hussein because we knew that he
had a biological weapons capability, failing to mention that we
knew about that because we had given him that capability in the
1980s.

I had the thought that if these further statements of Rice were
challenged by the senators, along with the many other question-
able statements she made in discussing Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela
(she said that she could not think of anything positive to say about
the Chavez government), the Dragon Lady might just crack a bit.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE

113

I pictured Humphrey Bogart in The Caine Mutiny , when, under
intense questioning by a Navy board of inquiry, he suddenly
takes out a pair of metal balls from his pocket and begins to
nervously and obsessively play with them. And that was the end
of Captain Queeg.

Well, a poor, ungratified dissenter can dream, can he not?

There’s no business like show business (2010)

She played Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D minor.

And accompanied the one and only Aretha Franklin.

A gala benefit performance in Philadelphia.

At the home of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Before 8,000 people.

And they loved it.

How many of them knew that the pianist was a genuine,
unindicted war criminal?

Guilty of crimes against humanity.

Defender of torture.

With much blood on her pianist hands.

Whose style in office for years could be characterized as
hypocrisy, disinformation, and outright lying.

But what did the audience care?

This is America.

Home of the Good Guys.

She was fighting against the Bad Guys.

And we all know that the show must go on.

So let’s hear it, folks. . . Let’s have a real all-American hand. . .
Let’s hear it for our own darling virtuoso... The Sweetheart
of Baghdad... Miss Condoleezza Rice!

HUMAN RIGHTS, CIVIL LIBERTIES,
AND TORTURE

The stain on humankind that does not go away

(June 8, 2007)

A report in the March 2007 issue of Archives of General Psychia-
try , a journal of the American Medical Association, based on
interviews of hundreds of survivors of the 1990s’ conflicts in the
former Yugoslavia, concludes that

aggressive interrogation techniques or detention procedures involv-
ing deprivation of basic needs, exposure to adverse environmental
conditions, forced stress positions, hooding or blindfolding,
isolation, restriction of movement, forced nudity, threats, humiliat-
ing treatment and other psychological manipulations do not appear
to be substantially different from physical torture in terms of the
extent of mental suffering they cause, the underlying mechanisms
of traumatic stress, and their long-term traumatic effects.

The report adds that these findings do not support the distinc-
tion between torture and ‘other cruel, inhuman and degrading
treatment’ (an expression taken from the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, 1948, often used in international human rights
conventions and declarations). Although these conventions
prohibit both types of acts, the report points out that ‘such a
distinction nevertheless reinforces the misconception that cruel,

HUMAN RIGHTS AND TORTURE

115

inhuman and degrading treatment causes lesser harm and might
therefore be permissible under exceptional circumstances. 51

These conclusions directly counter the frequent declarations
by George W. Bush, the Pentagon et al. that ‘We don’t torture. 5
They would have the world believe that aggressive psychological
torture isn’t really torture; although they of course have often em-
ployed the physical kind as well, to a degree leading on a number
of occasions to a prisoner’s death. (Justice Andrew Collins of the
British High Court: ‘America’s idea of what is torture is not the
same as ours and does not appear to coincide with that of most
civilized nations.’ 2 )

The conclusions of the journal’s report do not, however,
counter the argument of those like Harvard Law School professor
Alan Dershowitz, who loves to pose the classic question: ‘What if
a bomb has been set to go off, which will kill many people, and
only your prisoner knows where it’s located. Is it okay to torture
him to elicit the information?’

Humankind has been struggling for centuries to tame its worst
behaviors; ridding itself of the affliction of torture is high on that
list. Finally, a historic Erst step was taken by the United Nations
General Assembly in 1984 with the drafting of the ‘Convention
Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treat-
ment or Punishment’ (which came into force in 1987, was ratified
by the United States in 1994). Article 2, section 2 of the Conven-
tion states: ‘No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether
a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or
any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of
torture.’

Such marvelously clear, unambiguous and principled language,
to set a single standard for a world that makes it increasingly
difficult to feel proud of humanity. We cannot slide back. If
torture is broached as a possibility, it will become a reality. If
today it’s deemed acceptable to torture the person who has the

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

vital information, tomorrow it will be acceptable to torture his
colleague, or his wife or child, who - it’s suspected - may know
almost as much. Would we allow slavery to resume for just a
short while to serve some ‘national emergency’ or some other
‘higher purpose’?

‘I would personally rather die than have anyone tortured to
save my life’: the words of Craig Murray, former British ambas-
sador to Uzbekistan, who lost his job after he publicly condemned
the Uzbek regime in 2003 for its systematic use of torture. 3

If you open the window of torture, even just a crack, the cold
air of the Dark Ages will fill the whole room.

Being serious about torture - or not

(March 4, 2009)

In Cambodia they’re once again endeavoring to hold trials to
bring some former senior Khmer Rouge officials to justice for their
1 975~79 war crimes and crimes against humanity. The current
defendant in a United Nations-organized trial, Kaing Guek Eav,
who was the head of a Khmer Rouge torture center, has confessed
to atrocities, but insists he was acting under orders. 4 As we all
know, this is the defense that the Nuremberg Tribunal rejected for
the Nazi defendants. Everyone knows that, right? No one places
any weight on such a defense any longer, right? We make jokes
about Nazis declaring: ‘I was only following orders!’ Except that
both the Bush and Obama administrations have spoken in favor
of it. Here’s the head of the CIA, Leon Panetta:

What I have expressed as a concern, as has the president, is that
those who operated under the rules that were provided by the At-
torney General in the interpretation of the law [concerning torture]
and followed those rules ought not to be penalized. And ... I
would not support, obviously, an investigation or a prosecution of
those individuals. I think they did their job. 5

HUMAN RIGHTS AND TORTURE

117

Operating under the rules... following the rules... doing their
job. . . are all of course the same as following orders.

The UN Convention Against Torture, which has been rati-
fied by the United States, states quite clearly: ‘An order from
a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked
as a justification of torture.’ The Torture Convention enacts a
prohibition against torture that is a cornerstone of international
law and a principle on a par with the prohibition against slavery
and genocide.

Of course, those giving the orders are no less guilty. On the
very day of Obama’s inauguration, the United Nations Special
Rapporteur on torture invoked the Convention in calling on the
United States to pursue former president George W. Bush and
defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld for torture and bad treatment
of Guantanamo prisoners. 6

On several occasions, President Obama has indicated his
reluctance to pursue war crimes charges against Bush officials, by
expressing a view such as: ‘I don’t believe that anybody is above
the law. On the other hand I also have a belief that we need to
look forward as opposed to looking backwards.’ This is the same
excuse Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has given for not
punishing Khmer Rouge leaders. In December 1998 he asserted:
‘We should dig a hole and bury the past and look ahead to the
2ist century with a clean slate.’ 7 Hun Sen has been in power
all the years since then, and no Khmer Rouge leader has been
convicted for their role in the historic mass murder.

And by not indicting, or even investigating, Bush officials,
Obama is indeed saying that they’re above the law. Like the
Khmer Rouge officials have been. Michael Ratner, a professor at
Columbia Law School and president of the Center for Constitu-
tional Rights, said prosecuting Bush officials is necessary to set
future anti-torture policy.

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

The only way to prevent this from happening again is to make sure
that those who were responsible for the torture program pay the
price for it. I don’t see how we regain our moral stature by allowing
those who were intimately involved in the torture programs to
simply walk off the stage and lead lives where they are not held
accountable. 8

One reason for the non-prosecution may be that serious trials
of the many Bush officials who contributed to the torture policies
might reveal the various forms of Democratic Party non-opposition
and collaboration.

It should also be noted that the United States supported Pol
Pot (who died in April 1998) and the Khmer Rouge for several
years after they were ousted from power by the Vietnamese in
1979. This support began under Jimmy Carter and his national
security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and continued under
Ronald Reagan. 9 A lingering bitterness by American cold warriors
toward Vietnam, the small nation which monumental US power
had not been able to defeat, and its perceived closeness to the
Soviet Union, appears to be the only explanation for this policy.
Humiliation runs deep when you’re a superpower.

Neither should it be forgotten in this complex cautionary tale
that the Khmer Rouge in all likelihood would never have come
to power, nor even made a serious attempt to do so, if not for the
massive American ‘carpet bombing’ of Cambodia in 1969-70 and
the US-supported overthrow of Prince Sihanouk in 1970 and his
replacement by a man closely tied to the United States. 10 Thank
you Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. Well done, lads.

By the way, if you’re not already turned off by many of Obama’s
appointments, listen to how James Jones opened his talk at the
Munich Conference on Security Policy on February 8, 2009:
‘Thank you for that wonderful tribute to Henry Kissinger yester-
day. Congratulations. As the most recent National Security Advisor
of the United States, I take my daily orders from Dr. Kissinger.’ 11

HUMAN RIGHTS AND TORTURE

119

Lastly, Spain’s High Court recently announced it would launch
a war crimes investigation into an Israeli ex-defense minister and
six other top security officials for their role in a 2002 attack that
killed a Hamas commander and fourteen civilians in Gaza. 12 Spain
has for some time been the world’s leading practitioner of ‘universal
jurisdiction’ for human-rights violations, such as their indictment
of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet a decade ago. The Israeli
case involved the dropping of a bomb on the home of the Hamas
leader; most of those killed were children. The United States does
this very same thing every other day in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
Given the refusal of American presidents to invoke even their
‘national jurisdiction’ over American officials- cum-war criminals,
we can only hope that someone reminds the Spanish authorities
of a few names, like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, Feith,
Perle, Yoo, and a few others with a piece missing, a piece that’s
shaped like a social conscience. There isn’t even a need to rely on
international law alone, for there’s an American law against war
crimes, passed by a Republican-dominated Congress in 1996. 13

The noted Israeli columnist Uri Avnery, writing about the
Israeli case, tried to capture the spirit of Israeli society that
produces such war criminals and war crimes. He observed:

This system indoctrinates its pupils with a violent tribal cult,
totally ethnocentric, which sees in the whole of world history noth-
ing but an endless story of Jewish victimhood. This is a religion of
a Chosen People, indifferent to others, a religion without compas-
sion for anyone who is not Jewish, which glorifies the God-decreed
genocide described in the Biblical book ofjoshua . 14

It would take very little substitution to apply this statement to
the United States - like ‘American’ for ‘Jewish’ and ‘American
exceptionalism’ for ‘a Chosen People.’

The two nations have something else of importance in common:
the major problem in establishing both the United States and Israel

120

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

as nations was what to do with the indigenous people. They chose
the same solution. Kill ’em. Without legality. Without mercy.

Not your father’s kind of torture

(December 6, 2005)

We’ve been raised to associate torture with acts such as the
German and Japanese practices on prisoners during World War
II, the Salem witch trials, the Spanish Inquisition, and what we’ve
seen in torture museums, Hollywood films, and our comic books
... bodies stretched out on racks; locked into devices which press
metal points into the victim’s flesh and twist muscles and bones
into agonizingly painful positions; red-hot pincers burning off
flesh; the tearing out of fingernails ; thumbscrews to crush fingers
and toes; eyes gouged out ... while the torturer’s assistant, a
hunchback named Igor, looks on, salivating with sadistic glee.

To the extent that Cheney, Bush, Gonzales, and the rest of the
torture apologists and denyers think about it at all, these are the
kinds of images they’d like us to associate with torture, which,
they hope, will show that what the US does is not torture. But
who decided, and where is it written, that the historical torture
methods, both real and imagined, comprise the sine qua non
definition of torture? No one who has gone through the Ameri-
can dungeons in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, or spent
time at any of the many secret CIA facilities, and no American
who would be subjected to the same, would have any hesitation
calling what they experienced ‘torture.’ Merely reading some of
the stories is enough to convince a person with any sensitivity.
(Yes, to answer your question, that would exclude Cheney, Bush
and Gonzales.) I’ve put together a long and graphic list of the
techniques employed - from sleep deprivation, the use of dogs,
drowning simulation, and lying naked on a sheet of ice, to electric
shock, anal assault with various implements, being kept in highly

HUMAN RIGHTS AND TORTURE

121

stressful positions for hours on end, and ninety-nine other ways
to totally humiliate a human being; many of which the Nazis,
Japanese et al. could have learned from. 15

Interestingly, the United States granted immunity to a number
of the German and Japanese torturers after the war in exchange
for information about their torture methods.

Does the Obama administration use torture?

(April 6, 2012)

Another claim the Obamabots are fond of making to defend their
man is that he has abolished torture. That sounds very nice,
but there’s no good reason to accept it at face value. Shortly
after Obama’s inauguration, both he and Leon Panetta, the new
director of the CIA, explicitly stated that ‘rendition’ was not
being ended. As the Los Angeles Times reported: ‘Under executive
orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to
carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and
transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United
States.’ 16

The English translation of ‘cooperate’ is ‘torture.’ Rendition
is equal to torture. There was no other reason to take prisoners
to Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Egypt, Jordan, Kenya, Somalia,
Kosovo, or the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, to name
some of the known torture centers frequented by America’s na-
tional secutity team. Kosovo and Diego Garcia - both of which
house very large and secretive American military bases - if not
some of the other locations, may well still be open for torture busi-
ness. The same goes for Guantanamo. Moreover, the executive
order concerning torture, issued on January 22, 2009 (‘Executive
Order 13491 - Ensuring Lawful Interrogations’) leaves loopholes,
such as being applicable only ‘in any armed conflict.’ Thus,
torture by Americans outside environments of ‘armed conflict,’

122

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

which is where much torture in the world happens anyway, is
not prohibited. What about, for example, torture in a ‘counter-
terrorism’ environment?

One of Mr Obama’s orders required the CIA to use only the
interrogation methods outlined in a revised Army Field Manual.
However, using the Army Field Manual as a guide to prisoner
treatment and interrogation still allows solitary confinement, per-
ceptual or sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, the induction
of fear and hopelessness, mind-altering drugs, environmental
manipulation such as temperature and perhaps noise, and pos-
sibly stress positions and sensory overload.

After Panetta was questioned by a Senate panel, the New York
Times wrote that he had

left open the possibility that the agency could seek permission to
use interrogation methods more aggressive than the limited menu
that President Obama authorized under new rules ... Mr. Panetta
also said the agency would continue the Bush administration
practice of ‘rendition’ - picking terrorism suspects off the street
and sending them to a third country. But he said the agency would
refuse to deliver a suspect into the hands of a country known for
torture or other actions ‘that violate our human values.’ 17

He gave no examples of such a place.

Johnny got his gun

(January 2007)

In the past year Iran has issued several warnings to the United
States about the consequences of an American or Israeli attack.
One statement, issued in November 2006 by a high-ranking
Iranian military official, declared: ‘If America attacks Iran, its
200,000 troops and 33 bases in the region will be extremely vul-
nerable, and both American politicians and military commanders
are aware of it.’ 18 Iran apparently believes that American leaders
would be so deeply distressed by the prospect of their young men

HUMAN RIGHTS AND TORTURE

123

and women being endangered and possibly killed that they would
forswear any reckless attacks on Iran. As if American leaders have
been deeply stabbed by pain about throwing youthful American
bodies into the bottomless snakepit called Iraq, or the other one
which goes by the name Afghanistan, or were restrained by fear
of retaliation or by moral qualms while feeding 58,000 young
lives to the Vietnam beast. As if American leaders, like all world
leaders, have ever had such concerns.

Let’s have a short look at some modern American history,
which may be instructive in this regard. A report of the US
Congress in 1994 informed us that

Approximately 60,000 military personnel were used as human
subjects in the 1940s to test two chemical agents, mustard gas and
lewisite [blister gas]. Most of these subjects were not informed of
the nature of the experiments and never received medical followup
after their participation in the research. Additionally, some of
these human subjects were threatened with imprisonment at Fort
Leavenworth if they discussed these experiments with anyone,
including their wives, parents, and family doctors. For decades,
the Pentagon denied that the research had taken place, resulting
in decades of suffering for many veterans who became ill after the
secret testing. 19

In the decades between the 1940s and 1990s, we find a re-
markable variety of government programs, either formally, or in
effect, using soldiers as guinea pigs : marched to nuclear explosion
sites, with pilots sent through the mushroom clouds; subjected
to chemical and biological weapons experiments; radiation ex-
periments; behavior modification experiments that washed their
brains with LSD; widespread exposure to the highly toxic dioxin
of Agent Orange in Korea and Vietnam ... literally millions of
experimental subjects, seldom given a choice or adequate informa-
tion, often with disastrous effects to their physical and/or mental
health, rarely with proper medical care or even monitoring. 20

124

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

In the 1990s, many thousands of American soldiers came home
from the Gulf War with unusual, debilitating ailments. Exposure
to harmful chemical or biological agents was suspected, but the
Pentagon denied that this had occurred. Years went by while
the veterans suffered terribly: neurological problems, chronic
fatigue, skin problems, scarred lungs, memory loss, muscle and
joint pain, severe headaches, personality changes, passing out,
and much more. Eventually, the Pentagon, inch by inch, was
forced to move away from its denials and admit that, yes, chemical
weapon depots had been bombed; then, yes, there probably were
releases of deadly poisons; then, yes, American soldiers were
indeed in the vicinity of these poisonous releases, 400 soldiers;
then, it might have been 5,000; then, ‘a very large number’, prob-
ably more than 15,000; then, finally, a precise number - 20,867;
then, ‘The Pentagon announced that a long-awaited computer
model estimates that nearly 100,000 US soldiers could have been
exposed to trace amounts of sarin gas.’ 21

If the Pentagon had been much more forthcoming from the
outset about what it knew all along about these various substances
and weapons, the soldiers might have had a proper diagnosis early
on and received appropriate care sooner. The cost in terms of
human suffering is incalculable.

Soldiers have also been forced to take vaccines against anthrax
and nerve gas not approved by the US Food and Drug Adminis-
tration as safe and effective; and punished, sometimes treated like
criminals, if they refused. (During World War II, soldiers were
forced to take a yellow fever vaccine, with the result that some
330,000 of them were infected with the hepatitis B virus. 22 )

And through all the recent wars, countless American soldiers
have been put in close proximity to the radioactive dust of
exploded depleted uranium-tipped shells and missiles on the
battlefield; depleted uranium has been associated with a long list
of rare and terrible illnesses and birth defects. The widespread

HUMAN RIGHTS AND TORTURE

125

dissemination of depleted uranium by American warfare - from
Serbia to Afghanistan to Iraq - should be an international scandal
and crisis, like AIDS, and would be in a world not so intimidated
by the United States.

The catalog of Pentagon abuses of American soldiers goes on.
Troops serving in Iraq or their families have reported purchasing
with their own funds bullet-proof vests, better armor for their
vehicles, medical supplies, and global positioning devices, all
for their own safety, which were not provided by the army...
Continuous complaints by servicewomen of sexual assault and
rape at the hands of their male counterparts are routinely played
down or ignored by the military brass... Numerous injured and
disabled vets from all wars have to engage in an ongoing struggle
to get the medical care they were promised... Read ‘Army Acts
to Curb Abuses of Injured Recruits’ (New York Times , May 12,
2006) for accounts of the callous, bordering on sadistic, treatment
of soldiers in bases in the United States... repeated tours of duty,
which fracture family life and increase the chance not only of death
or injury but of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 23

National Public Radio’s All Things Considered , on December 4,
2006 and other days, ran a series on army mistreatment of soldiers
home from Iraq and suffering serious PTSD. At Colorado’s Fort
Carson these afflicted soldiers are receiving a variety of abuse
and punishment much more than the help they need, as officers
harass and punish them for being emotionally ‘weak.’

Keep the above in mind the next time you hear a president
or a general speaking on Memorial Day about ‘honor’ and ‘duty’
and about how much we ‘owe to the brave young men and women
who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the cause of freedom and
democracy.’ These officials have scarcely any more concern for
the hapless American servicemen than they do for the foreigners
they kill as in a video game. And read Johnny Got His Gun by
Dalton Trumbo.

126

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

The moral progression of mankind

When it comes to supporting the rights ofjews, there is no greater
leader than the Third Reich, and we show that by holding people
accountable when they violate the rights of our Jewish citizens.

We show that by supporting the advance of religious and ethnic
tolerance and supporting those Jewish people in countries where
their human rights are denied or violated, like Austria. (Joseph
Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, March 6, 1941)

When it comes to human rights, there is no greater leader than
the United States of America, and we show that by holding people
accountable when they break the law or violate human rights. We
show that by supporting the advance of freedom and democracy
and supporting those in countries that are having their human
rights denied or violated, like North Korea. (Scott McClellan,
White House spokesman, December 2, 2005)

Can you guess which of these statements I’ve made up?

A drone attack, coming soon
to a country (or city) near you?

On January 13, 2006 the United States of America, in its shocking
and awesome wisdom, saw fit to fly an unmanned Predator aircraft
over a remote village in the sovereign nation of Pakistan and fire a
Hellfire missile into a residential compound in an attempt to kill
some ‘bad guys? Several houses were incinerated, eighteen people
were killed, including an unknown number of ‘bad guys’; reports
since then give every indication that the unknown number is as
low as zero, al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri,
the principal target, not being among them. Outrage is still being
expressed in Pakistan. In the United States the reaction in the
Senate typified the American outrage.

‘We apologize, but I can’t tell you that we wouldn’t do the same
thing again,’ said Senator John McCain of Arizona.

HUMAN RIGHTS AND TORTURE

127

‘It’s a regrettable situation, but what else are we supposed to
do?’ asked Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana.

‘My information is that this strike was clearly justified by the
intelligence,’ said Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi. 24

Similar US attacks using such drones and missiles have angered
citizens and political leaders in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen. It
has not been uncommon for the destruction to be so complete that
it is impossible to establish who was killed, or even how many
people. Amnesty International has lodged complaints with the
Busheviks following each suspected Predator strike. A UN report
in the wake of the 2002 strike in Yemen called it ‘an alarming
precedent [and] a clear case of extrajudicial killing’ in violation
of international laws and treaties. 25

Can it be imagined that American officials would fire a missile
into a house in Paris or London or Ottawa because they suspected
that high-ranking al- Qaeda members were present there? Even if
the US knew of their presence for an absolute fact, and was not
just acting on speculation, as in the Predator cases mentioned
above? Well, they most likely would not attack, but can we put
anything past Swaggering-Superarrogant-Superpower-Cowboys-
on-steroids? After all, they’ve already done it to their own - a
US drone attack killed two American citizens in Yemen in 2011,
and on May 13, 1985, a bomb dropped by a police helicopter
over Philadelphia, Pennsylvania burned down an entire block,
some sixty homes destroyed, eleven dead, including several small
children. The police, the mayor’s office, and the FBI were all
involved in this effort to evict an organization called MOVE from
the house they lived in.

The victims in Philadelphia were all black of course. So let’s
rephrase the question: can it be imagined that American officials
would fire a missile into a residential area of Beverly Hills or the
Upper East Side of Manhattan? Stay tuned.

128

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

The right to exercise one’s mind

(December 6, 2005)

The Supreme Court announced in 2005 it would review a Penn-
sylvania case concerning prisons denying dangerous prisoners
access to most reading material, television, and radio. These
prisoners are permitted to read only religious and legal materi-
als and paperback books from the prison library. A three-judge
federal appeals court that struck the policy down did so over the
dissent of Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr, President Bush’s nominee
for the Supreme Court.

‘“On their face,” Alito wrote, “these regulations are reason-
ably related to the legitimate penological goal of curbing prison
misconduct” - because prisoners would be deterred from misbe-
having by the prospect of being sent to a place where they have
to do without TV and magazines.’ 26

Never mind Alito’s views on abortion, civil liberties, or gay
rights, which have preoccupied those evaluating his fitness for the
high court. But consider the deep-seated, plain, simple meanness
of the man in wishing to deprive prisoners of mental stimulation
through their long nights and years behind bars. Why doesn’t he
advocate that these prisoners be deprived of food? Surely that
would be an even greater deterrent against misbehavior.

Since I gave up hope, I feel better

(May 1, 2008)

More than any time in history, mankind now faces a crossroads.
One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to
total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose
correctly. (Woody Allen)

Food riots, in dozens of countries, in the twenty-first century. Is
this what we envisioned during the post-World War II, moon-
landing twentieth century as humankind’s glorious future?

HUMAN RIGHTS AND TORTURE

129

American writer Henry Miller (1891-1980) once asserted that
the role of the artist was to ‘inoculate the world with disillusion-
ment.’ So just in case you, for whatever odd reason, still cling to
the belief/hope that the United States can be a positive force in
ending or slowing down the new jump in world hunger, here are
some disillusioning facts of life.

On December 14, 1981 a resolution was proposed in the United
Nations General Assembly which declared that ‘education, work,
health care, proper nourishment, national development are human
rights.’ Notice the ‘proper nourishment.’ The resolution was ap-
proved by a vote of 135:1. The United States cast the only ‘No’
vote.

A year later, on December 18, 1982, an identical resolution was
proposed in the General Assembly. It was approved by a vote of
131:1. The United States again cast the only ‘No’ vote.

The following year, December 16, 1983, the resolution was
again put forward, a common practice at the United Nations.
This time it was approved by a vote of 132:1. There’s no need to
tell you who cast the sole ‘No’ vote.

These votes took place under the Reagan administration.

Under the Clinton administration, in 1996, a United Nations-
sponsored World Food Summit affirmed the ‘right of everyone
to have access to safe and nutritious food.’ The United States
took issue with this, insisting that it does not recognize a ‘right
to food.’ Washington instead championed free trade as the key
to ending the poverty at the root of hunger, and expressed fears
that recognition of a ‘right to food’ could lead to lawsuits from
poor nations seeking aid and special trade provisions. 27

The situation did not improve under the administration of
George W. Bush. In 2002, in Rome, world leaders at another
UN-sponsored World Food Summit again approved a declaration
that everyone had the right to ‘safe and nutritious food.’ The
United States continued to oppose the clause, again fearing it

130

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

would leave them open to future legal claims by famine-stricken
countries . 28

Moreover, those defending the US opposition to a Human
Right to Food (HRF) have been motivated by the fact that it is
not protected by the US Constitution; that it is associated with
un-American and socialist political systems; that the American
way is self-reliance; that freedom from want is an invention of
President Franklin Roosevelt; that food anxiety is an energizing
challenge that can mobilize the needy to surmount their distress-
ing circumstances; that taking on HRF obligations would be too
expensive . 29

WIKILEAKS

WikiLeaks, the United States, Sweden, and Devil’s Island

December 16, 2010: I’m standing in the snow in front of the
White House. Standing with Veterans for Peace.

I’m only a veteran of standing in front of the White House; the
first time was February 1965, handing out flyers against the war
in Vietnam. I was working for the State Department at the time
and my biggest fear was that someone from that noble institution
would pass by and recognize me. Five years later I was still
protesting Vietnam, although long gone from the State Depart-
ment. Then came Cambodia. And Laos. Soon Nicaragua and El
Salvador. Then Panama was the new great threat to America,
to freedom and democracy and all things holy and decent, so it
had to be bombed without mercy. This was followed by the first
war against the people of Iraq, and the bombing of Yugoslavia.
Then the land of Afghanistan had rained down upon it depleted
uranium, napalm, phosphorous bombs, and other witches’ brews
and weapons of the chemical dust; then Iraq again. And I’ve
skipped a few. I think I hold the record for picketing the White
House the most times by a right-handed batter.

And through it all, the good, hard-working, righteous people
of America have believed mightily that their country always

132

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

means well; some even believe to this day that we never started
a war, certainly nothing deserving of the appellation ‘war of
aggression.’

On that same snowy day Julian Assange of WikiLeaks was
freed from prison in London and told reporters that he was more
concerned that the United States might try to extradite him than
he was about being extradited to Sweden, where he faced ‘sexual’
charges . 1

That’s a fear many political and drug prisoners in various
countries have expressed in recent years. The United States is the
new Devil’s Island of the Western world. From the mid-nineteenth
to the mid-twentieth century, political prisoners were shipped to
that godforsaken strip of French land off the eastern coast of South
America. One of the current residents of the new Devil’s Island
is Bradley Manning, the former US intelligence analyst suspected
of leaking diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks. Manning faces virtual
life in prison if found guilty, of something. Without being tried
or convicted of anything, he is allowed only very minimal contact
with the outside world; or with people, daylight, or news; among
the things he is denied are a pillow, sheets, and exercise; his sleep
is restricted and frequently interrupted. See Glenn Greenwald’s
discussion of how Manning’s treatment constitutes torture . 2

A friend of the young soldier says that many people are reluc-
tant to talk about Manning’s deteriorating physical and mental
condition because of government harassment, including surveil-
lance, seizure of their computer without a warrant, and even
attempted bribes. ‘This has had such an intimidating effect that
many are afraid to speak out on his behalf .’ 3 A developer of
the transparency software used by WikiLeaks was detained for
several hours last summer by federal agents at a Newark, New
Jersey airport, where he was questioned about his connection to
WikiLeaks and Assange as well as his opinions about the wars
in Afghanistan and Iraq . 4

WIKILEAKS

133

This is but a tiny incident from the near-century buildup of
the American police state, from the Red Scare of the 1920s to
the McCarthyism of the 1950s to the crackdown against Central
American protesters in the 1980s... elevated by the War on
Drugs... now multiplied by the War on Terror. It’s not the worst
police state in history, not even the worst police state in the world
today, but nonetheless it is a police state, and certainly the most
pervasive police state ever - a Washington Post study revealed that
there are 4,058 separate federal, state and local ‘counterterrorism’
organizations spread across the United States, each with its own
responsibilities and jurisdictions. 5 The police of America, of
many types, generally get what and who they want. If the United
States gets its hands on Julian Assange, under any legal pretext,
fear for him; it might be the end of his life as a free person; the
actual facts of what he’s done or the actual wording of US laws
will not matter; hell hath no fury like an empire scorned.

John Burns, chief foreign correspondent for the New York
Times , after interviewing Assange, stated: ‘He is profoundly of the
conviction that the United States is a force for evil in the world,
that it’s destructive of democracy.’ 6 Can anyone who believes that
be entitled to a full measure of human rights on Devil’s Island?

The WikiLeaks documents have added to the steady, gradual
erosion of people’s belief in the US government’s good inten-
tions, which is necessary to overcome a lifetime of indoctrina-
tion. Many more individuals over the years would have been
standing in front of the White House if they had had access to
the plethora of information that floods people today; which is
not to say that we would have succeeded in stopping any of the
wars - that’s a question of to what extent the United States is
a democracy.

One further consequence of Assange’s predicament may be to
put an end to the widespread belief that Sweden, or the Swedish
government, is peaceful, progressive, neutral, and independent.

134

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

Stockholm’s behavior in this matter and others has been as Ameri-
can-poodle-like as London’s, as it lined itself up with an Assange
accuser who has been associated with right-wing anti-Castro
Cubans, who are of course US-government-supported. This is
the same Sweden that for some time in recent years was working
with the CIA on its torture-rendition flights and has about 500
soldiers in Afghanistan. Sweden is the world’s largest per capita
arms exporter, and for years has taken part in US/NATO military
exercises, some within its own territory. The left should get
themselves a new nation to admire. Try Cuba.

There’s also the old stereotype held by Americans of Scandi-
navians practicing a sophisticated and tolerant attitude toward
sex, an image that was initiated, or enhanced, by the celebrated
1967 Swedish film I Am Curious (Yellow), which had been banned
for a while in the United States. And now what do we have?
Sweden sending Interpol on an international hunt for a man who
apparently upset two women, perhaps for no more than sleeping
with them both in the same week.

And while they’re at it, American progressives should also lose
their quaint belief that the BBC is somehow a liberal broadcaster.
Americans are such suckers for British accents. John Humphrys,
the presenter of the BBC Today program, asked Assange: ‘Are you
a sexual predator?’ Assange said the suggestion was ‘ridiculous,’
adding: ‘Of course not.’ Humphrys then asked Assange how many
woman he had slept with. 7 Would even Fox News have descended
to that level? I wish Assange had been raised in the streets of
Brooklyn, as I was. He would then have known precisely how to
reply to such a question: ‘You mean including your mother?’

Another group of people who should learn a lesson from all
this are the knee-reflex conspiracists. Several of them have already
written me snide letters informing me of my naivete in not real-
izing that Israel is actually behind the release of the WikiLeaks
documents; which is why, they inform me, nothing about Israel

WIKILEAKS

135

is mentioned. I had to inform them that I had already seen a few
documents putting Israel in a bad light. I’ve since seen others,
and Assange, in an interview with A 1 Jazeera on December 23,
2010 stated that only a meager number of hies related to Israel
had been published so far because the publications in the West
that were given exclusive rights to publish the secret documents
were reluctant to publish much sensitive information about Israel.
(Imagine the flak Germany’s Der Spiegel would get hit with.)
‘There are 3,700 hies related to Israel and the source of 2,700
hies is Israel,’ said Assange. ‘In the next six months we intend
to publish more hies.’ 8

Naturally, several other individuals have informed me that it’s
the CIA that is actually behind the document release.

The saga of Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and WikiLeaks,
to be put to ballad and him (March 5, 2012)

Defense lawyers say Manning was clearly a troubled young soldier
whom the Army should never have deployed to Iraq or given
access to classified material while he was stationed there . . . They
say he was in emotional turmoil, partly because he was a gay
soldier at a time when homosexuals were barred from serving
openly in the U.S. armed forces. 9

It’s unfortunate and disturbing that Bradley Manning’s attor-
neys have chosen to consistently base his legal defense upon
the premise that personal problems and shortcomings are what
motivated the young man to turn over hundreds of thousands
of classihed government hies to WikiLeaks. They should not be
presenting him that way any more than Bradley should be tried
as a criminal or traitor. He should be hailed as a national hero.
Yes, even when the lawyers are talking to the military mind. May
as well try to penetrate that mind and hnd the freest and best
person living there. Bradley also wears a military uniform.

136

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

Here are Manning’s own words from an online chat:

If you had free reign [sic] over classified networks . . . and you
saw incredible things, awful things ... things that belonged in
the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room
in Washington DC . . . what would you do? ... God knows what
happens now. Hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and
reforms. ... I want people to see the truth ... because without
information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.

Is the world to believe that these are the words of a disturbed
and irrational person? Do not the Nuremberg Tribunal and the
Geneva Conventions speak of a higher duty than blind loyalty
to one’s government, a duty to report the war crimes of that
government?

Below is a listing of some of the things revealed in the State
Department cables and Defense Department files and videos.
For exposing such embarrassing and less-than-honorable be-
havior, Bradley Manning of the United States Army and Julian
Assange of WikiLeaks may spend most of their remaining days in
a modern dungeon, much of it while undergoing that particular
form of torture known as ‘solitary confinement.’ Indeed, it has
been suggested that the mistreatment of Manning has been for
the purpose of making him testify against and implicate Assange.
Dozens of members of the American media and public officials
have called for Julian Assange’s execution or assassination. Under
the new National Defense Authorization Act, Assange could well
be kidnapped or assassinated. What century are we living in?
What world?

It was after seeing American war crimes such as those depicted
in the video Collateral Murder and documented in the ‘Iraq War
Logs,’ made public by Manning and WikiLeaks, that the Iraqis
refused to exempt US forces from prosecution for future crimes.
The video depicts an American helicopter indiscriminately
murdering several non-combatants in addition to two Reuters

WIKILEAKS

137

journalists, and the wounding of two small children, while the
helicopter pilots cheer the attacks in a Baghdad suburb like it was
the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia.

The insistence of the Iraqi government on legal jurisdiction
over American soldiers for violations of Iraqi law - something the
United States rarely, if ever, accepts in any of the many countries
where its military is stationed - forced the Obama administration
to pull virtually all American troops from the country.

If Manning had committed war crimes in Iraq instead of ex-
posing them, he would be a free man today, like the numerous
American soldiers guilty of truly loathsome crimes in cities such
as Haditha and Fallujah.

Besides playing a role in writing finis to the awful Iraq War,
the WikiLeaks disclosures helped to spark the Arab Spring,
beginning in Tunisia.

When people in Tunisia read or heard of US embassy cables
revealing the extensive corruption and decadence of the extended
ruling family there - one long and detailed cable being titled ‘Cor-
ruption in Tunisia: What’s Yours is Mine’ - how Washington’s
support of Tunisian President Ben Ali was not really strong,
and that the US would not support the regime in the event of a
popular uprising, they took to the streets.

Here is a sample of some of the other WikiLeaks revelations
based on the embassy cables that have made the people of the
world wiser:

• In 2009 Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano became the new
head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which plays
the leading role in the investigation of whether Iran is devel-
oping nuclear weapons or is working only on peaceful civil-
ian nuclear energy projects. A US embassy cable of October
2009 said Amano ‘took pains to emphasize his support for
U.S. strategic objectives for the Agency. Amano reminded the

138

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

[American] ambassador on several occasions that ... he was
solidly in the U.S. court on every key strategic decision, from
high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran’s
alleged nuclear weapons program.’

• Russia refuted US claims that Iran has missiles that could
target Europe.

• The British government’s official inquiry into how it got
involved in the Iraq War was deeply compromised by the
government’s pledge to protect the Bush administration in the
course of the inquiry.

• A discussion between Yemeni President Ah Abdullah Saleh
and American General David H. Petraeus in which Saleh
indicated he would cover up the US role in missile strikes
against al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen. ‘We’ll continue saying
the bombs are ours, not yours,’ Saleh told Petraeus.

• The US embassy in Madrid had serious points of friction with
the Spanish government and civil society: (a) trying to get the
criminal case dropped against three US soldiers accused of
killing a Spanish television cameraman in Baghdad during a
2003 unprovoked US tank shelling of the hotel where he and
other journalists were staying; (b) torture cases brought by
a Spanish NGO against six senior Bush administration of-
ficials, including former attorney general Alberto Gonzales; (c)
a Spanish government investigation into the torture of Spanish
subjects held at Guantanamo; (d) a probe by a Spanish court
into the use of Spanish bases and airfields for American extraor-
dinary rendition (= torture) flights; (e) continual criticism of
the Iraq War by Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez
Zapatero, who eventually withdrew Spanish troops.

• State Department officials at the United Nations, as well as
US diplomats in various embassies, were assigned to gather
as much of the following information as possible about UN
officials, including Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, permanent

WIKILEAKS

139

Security Council representatives, senior UN staff, and foreign
diplomats: email and website addresses, Internet user names
and passwords, personal encryption keys, credit card numbers,
frequent flyer account numbers, work schedules, and biometric
data. US diplomats at the embassy in Asuncion, Paraguay, were
asked to obtain dates, times, and telephone numbers of calls
received and placed by foreign diplomats from China, Iran,
and the Latin American leftist states of Cuba, Venezuela, and
Bolivia. US diplomats in Romania, Hungary, and Slovenia
were instructed to provide biometric information on ‘current
and emerging leaders and advisers.’ The UN directive also
specifically asked for ‘biometric information on ranking North
Korean diplomats.’ A cable to embassies in the Great Lakes
region of Africa said biometric data included DNA, as well as
iris scans and fingerprints.

A special ‘Iran observer’ in the Azerbaijan capital of Baku
reported on a dispute that played out during a meeting of Iran’s
Supreme National Security Council. An enraged Revolution-
ary Guard Chief of Staff, Mohammed Ali Jafari, allegedly
got into a heated argument with Iranian president Mahmoud
Alimadinejad and slapped him in the face because the generally
conservative president had, surprisingly, advocated freedom of
the press.

The State Department, virtually alone in the Western hemi-
sphere, did not unequivocally condemn a June 28, 2009
military coup in Honduras, even though an embassy cable
declared: ‘there is no doubt that the military, Supreme Court
and National Congress conspired on June 28 in what consti-
tuted an illegal and unconstitutional coup against the Execu-
tive Branch.’ [US support for the coup government has been
unwavering ever since.]

[There has been much US criticism of Ecuador’s President
Rafael Correa for his hostile behavior toward the mass media,

140

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

but a March 31, 2009 State Department cable stated:] ‘There
is more than a grain of truth to Correa’s observation that the
Ecuadorian media play a political role, in this case the role of
the opposition. Many media outlet owners come from the elite
business class that feels threatened by Correa’s reform agenda,
and defend their own economic interests via their outlets.’

• The leadership of the Swedish Social Democratic Party visited
the US embassy in Stockholm and asked for advice on how best
to sell the war in Afghanistan to a skeptical Swedish public,
asking if the US could arrange for a member of the Afghan
government to visit Sweden and talk up NATO’s humanitarian
efforts on behalf of Afghan children, and so forth.

• The US pushed to influence Swedish wiretapping laws so
communication passing through Sweden could be intercepted.
[The American interest was clear: reportedly 80 percent of all
the Internet traffic from Russia travels through Sweden.]

• Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, told
US embassy officials in Brussels in January 2010 that no one in
Europe believed in Afghanistan anymore. He said Europe was
going along in deference to the United States and that there
must be results in 2010, or ‘Afghanistan is over for Europe.’

• Iraqi officials saw Saudi Arabia, not Iran, as the biggest threat
to the integrity and cohesion of their fledgling democratic state.
The Iraqi leaders were keen to assure their American patrons
that they could easily ‘manage’ the Iranians, who wanted stabil-
ity; but that the Saudis wanted a ‘weak and fractured’ Iraq,
and were even ‘fomenting terrorism that would destabilize the
government.’ The Saudi King, moreover, wanted a US military
strike on Iran.

• Saudi Arabia in 2007 threatened to pull out of a Texas oil
refinery investment unless the US government intervened to
stop Saudi Ararnco from being sued in US courts for alleged
oil price fixing. The deputy Saudi oil minister said that he

WIKILEAKS

141

wanted the US to grant Saudi Arabia sovereign immunity from
lawsuits.

Saudi donors were the chief financiers of Sunni militant groups
like al-Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, and Lashkar-e-Taiba, which
carried out the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Pfizer, the world’s largest pharmaceuticals company, hired
investigators to unearth evidence of corruption against the
Nigerian attorney general in order to persuade him to drop
legal action over a controversial 1996 drug trial involving chil-
dren with meningitis.

Oil giant Shell claimed to have ‘inserted staff’ and fully in-
filtrated Nigeria’s government.

The United States overturned a ban on training the Indonesian
Kopassus army special forces - despite the Kopassus’s long
history of arbitrary detention, torture, and murder - after the
Indonesian president threatened to derail President Obama’s
trip to the country in November 2010.

The Obama administration renewed military ties with In-
donesia in spite of serious concerns expressed by American
diplomats about the Indonesian military’s activities in the
province of West Papua, expressing fears that the Indonesian
government’s neglect, rampant corruption, and human rights
abuses were stoking unrest in the region.

US officials collaborated with Lebanon’s defense minister to
spy on, and allow Israel to potentially attack, Hezbollah in the
weeks that preceded a violent May 2008 military confrontation
in Beirut.

Gabon president Omar Bongo allegedly pocketed millions
in embezzled funds from central African states, channeling
some of it to French political parties in support of Nicolas
Sarkozy.

Cables from the US embassy in Caracas in 2006 asked the US
secretary of state to warn President Hugo Chavez against a

142

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

Venezuelan military intervention to defend the Cuban revolution
in the eventuality of an American invasion after Castro’s death.

• The United States was concerned that the leftist Latin American
television network Telesur, headquartered in Venezuela, would
collaborate with A 1 Jazeera of Qatar, whose coverage of the Iracj
War had gotten under the skin of the Bush administration.

• The Vatican told the United States it wanted to undermine
the influence of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in Latin
America because of concerns about the deterioration of Catho-
lic power there. It feared that Chavez was seriously damag-
ing relations between the Catholic Church and the state by
identifying the Church hierarchy in Venezuela as part of the
privileged class.

• The Holy See welcomed President Obama’s new outreach to
Cuba and hoped for further steps soon, perhaps to include
prison visits for the wives of the Cuban Five [arrested in the
US]. Better US-Cuba ties would deprive Hugo Chavez of
one of his favorite screeds and could help restrain him in the
region.

• In 2010, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown raised with Sec-
retary of State Hillary Clinton the question of visas for two
wives of members of the ‘Cuban Five.’ ‘Brown requested that
the wives (who have previously been refused visas to visit the
U.S.) be granted visas so that they could visit their husbands in
prison. . . . Our subsequent queries to Number to indicate that
Brown made this request as a result of a commitment that he
had made to LTK trade unionists, who form part of the Labour
Party’s core constituency. Now that the request has been made,
Brown does not intend to pursue this matter further. There is
no USG action required.’

• UK officials concealed from Parliament how the US was
allowed to bring cluster bombs onto British soil in defiance
of a treaty banning the housing of such weapons.

WIKILEAKS

143

A cable was sent by an official at the US Interests Section in
Havana in July 2006, during the runup to the Non-Aligned
Movement conference. He noted that he was actively looking
for ‘human interest stories and other news that shatters the
myth of Cuban medical prowess.’ [Presumably to be used to
weaken support for Cuba among the member nations at the
conference.]

Most of the men sent to Guantanamo prison were innocent
people or low-level operatives; many of the innocent individu-
als were sold to the US for bounty.

DynCorp, a powerful American defense contracting firm that
claims almost $2 billion per year in revenue from US tax
dollars, threw a ‘boy-play’ party for Afghan police recruits.
[Yes, it’s what you think.]

Even though the Bush and Obama administrations repeatedly
maintained publicly that there was no official count of civilian
casualties, the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs showed that this
claim was untrue.

A 2009 US cable said that police brutality in Egypt against
common criminals was routine and pervasive, the police using
force to extract confessions from criminals on a daily basis.
Known Egyptian torturers received training at the FBI Academy
in Quantico, Virginia.

The United States put great pressure on the Haitian government
not to go ahead with various projects, with no regard for the
welfare of the Haitian people. A 2005 cable stressed continued
US insistence that all efforts must be made to keep former
president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, whom the United States had
overthrown the previous year, from returning to Haiti or influ-
encing the political process. In 2006, Washington’s target was
President Rene Preval for his agreeing to a deal with Venezuela
to join Caracas’s Caribbean oil alliance PetroCaribe, under
which Haiti would buy oil from Venezuela, paying only 60

144

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

percent up-front with the remainder payable over twenty-five
years at 1 percent interest. And in 2009, the State Department
backed American corporate opposition to an increase in the
minimum wage for Haitian workers, the poorest paid in the
Western hemisphere.

• The United States used threats, spying, and more to try to get its
way at the crucial 2009 climate conference in Copenhagen.

• Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian National Author-
ity, and head of the Fatah movement, turned to Israel for help
in attacking Hamas in Gaza in 2007.

• The British government trained a Bangladeshi paramilitary
force condemned by human rights organizations as a ‘govern-
ment death squad.’

• A US military order directed American forces not to investigate
cases of torture of detainees by Iraqis.

• The US was involved in the Australian government’s 2006
campaign to oust Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh
Sogavare.

• US diplomats pressured the German government to stifle the
prosecution of CIA operatives who abducted and tortured
Khalid El-Masri, a German citizen. [El-Masri was kidnapped
by the CIA while on vacation in Macedonia on December
31, 2003. He was flown to a torture center in Afghanistan,
where he was beaten, starved, and anally assaulted. The US
government released him on a hilltop in Albania five months
later without money or the means to go home.]

• 2005 cable re ‘widespread severe torture’ by India. The Inter-
national Committee of the Red Cross reported: ‘The continued
ill-treatment of detainees, despite longstanding ICRC-GOI
[Government of India] dialogue, have led the ICRC to conclude
that New Delhi condones torture.’ Washington was briefed on
this matter by the ICRC years ago. [American leaders, includ-
ing the present ones, continued to speak warmly of ‘the world’s

WIKILEAKS

145

largest democracy’; as if torture and one of the worst rates of
poverty and child malnutrition in the world do not contradict
the very idea of democracy.]

• Since at least 2006 the United States has been funding politi-
cal opposition groups in Syria, including a satellite television
channel that beams anti-government programming into the
country.

CONSPIRACIES

Once is an accident; twice is a coincidence;
three times is a conspiracy

All science would be superfluous if die outward appearance and

the essence of things directly coincided. (Karl Marx, Das Kapital ,

Vol. Ill)

I believe in conspiracies. So do all of you. American and world
history are full of conspiracies. Watergate was a conspiracy.
The cover-up of Watergate was a conspiracy. So was Enron.
And Iran-Contra. The October Surprise really took place. For
a full year, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney conspired to
invade Iraq while continually denying that they had made any
such decision. The Japanese conspired to attack Pearl Harbor
while negotiating with Washington to find peaceful solutions to
the issues separating the two governments. There are numer-
ous people sitting in prison at this very moment in the United
States for having been convicted of ‘conspiracy’ to commit this
or that crime.

However, it doesn’t follow that all conspiracy theories are
created equal, all to be taken seriously. Many people send me
emails about perceived conspiracies which I don’t place much
weight on. Here are a few examples.

CONSPIRACIES

147

If they try to access my website a few times and keep getting
an error message, they ask me if the FBI or Homeland Security or
America Online has finally gotten around to shutting me down.

If they send me an email and it’s returned to them, for whatever
reason, they wonder if AOL is blocking their particular mail or
perhaps blocking all my mail.

If they fail to receive a copy of my monthly Anti-Empire Report ,
they wonder if AOL or some government agency is blocking it.

If they come upon a news item on the Internet which exposes
really bad behavior of the powers-that-be, they point out how
‘the mainstream media is completely ignoring this,’ even though
I may already have read it in the Washington Post or the New York
Times. To make the claim that the mainstream media is completely
ignoring a particular news item, one would need to have access
to the full version of a service like Lexis-Nexis and know how to
use it expertly. Google often won’t suffice if the news item has not
appeared on the website of any mainstream media even though it
may be in print or have been broadcast, although the creation of
Google News has improved chances of Ending an item.

No matter how many times I’m critical of Israel, no matter
how many years I’ve gone without issuing a single favorable word
about Israeli policies towards the Palestinians, if I happen to
discuss a number of US interventions but don’t make any mention
of how Israel is the driving force behind [most? almost all? all?]
of these interventions, then I’m a closet Zionist.

With every new audiotape or videotape from Osama bin Laden
my correspondents were sure to inform me that the man was really
dead and that the tape was a CIA fabrication. In January 2006,
when bin Laden, on an audiotape, recommended that Americans
read my book Rogue State , the mainstream media were eager to
interview me. But a number of my correspondents were quick
to inform me and the entire Internet that the tape was phony,
implying that I was being naive to believe it. When I ask them

148

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

why the CIA would want to publicize and increase the book sales
of a writer like myself, who has been exposing the intelligence
agency’s crimes his entire writing life, I get no answer that’s worth
remembering, often not even understandable.

‘Why do you bother criticizing Bush (or Obama)? He’s not
the real power. He’s just a puppet,’ they say to me. The real
power behind the throne, I’ve been told, is/was Dick Cheney/
David Rockefeller/the Federal Reserve/the Council on Foreign
Relations/the Bilderberger Group/the Trilateral Commission/
Bohemian Grove, and so on. Why, I wonder, are the annual
meetings of the Bilderberger Group et al. thought to be so vital
to their members and so indicative of their power? To the extent
that the Bilderbergerites have access to those in power and are
able to influence them, they have this access and power all year
long, whether or not they gather together in a once-a-year closed
meeting. I think their meetings are primarily a social thing. Money
and power like to enjoy cocktails with money and power.

Finally, there’s September 11, 2001. Among those in the ‘9/11
Truth Movement’ I am a sinner because I don’t champion the
idea that it was an ‘inside job,’ although I don’t dismiss this idea
categorically. I think it more likely that the Bush administration
had received intelligence that something was about to happen
involving airplanes, perhaps took it to mean an old-fashioned
hijacking with political demands, and then let it happen, to make
use of it politically, as they certainly did.

When I say that I don’t think that 9/11 was an ‘inside job,’ it’s
not because I believe that men like Dick Cheney, George W. Bush,
Donald Rumsfeld et al. were not morally depraved enough to carry
out such a monstrous act; these men consciously and directly
instigated the Iraqi and Afghanistan horrors which have cost
many more American lives than were lost on 9/11, not to mention
more than a million Iraqis and Afghans who dearly wanted to
remain among the living. In the Gulf War of 1991, Cheney and

CONSPIRACIES

149

other American leaders purposely destroyed electricity-generating
plants, water-pumping systems, and sewerage systems in Iraq,
then imposed sanctions upon the country making the repair of the
infrastructure extremely difficult. Then, after twelve years, when
the Iraqi people had performed the heroic task of getting these
systems working fairly well again, the US bombers came back to
inflict devastating damage to them all once more. My books and
many others document one major crime against humanity after
another by our America once so dear and cherished.

So it’s not the moral question that makes me doubt the inside-
job scenario. It’s the logistics of it all - the incredible complexity
of arranging it all so that it would work and not be wholly and
transparently unbelievable. That and the gross overkill - they
didn’t need to destroy all those buildings and planes and people.
One of the twin towers killing more than a thousand would
certainly have been enough to sell the War on Terror, the Patriot
Act, Homeland Security, and the new American Police State. The
American people are not such a hard sell. They really yearn to
be true believers. Look how so many of them worship Obama
despite his waging one war after another.

To win over people like me, the 9/11 truth people need to
present a scenario that makes the logistics reasonably plausible.
They might start by trying to answer questions like the following.
Did planes actually hit the towers and the Pentagon and crash
in Pennsylvania? Were these the same four United Airline and
American Airline planes that took off from Boston and Newark?
At the time of collision, were they being piloted by people or
by remote control? If by people, who were these people? What
happened to all the passengers?

Also, why did building 7 collapse? If it was purposely de-
molished - why? All the reasons I’ve read so far I End not very
credible. As to the films of the towers and building 7 collapsing,
which make it appear that this had to be the result of controlled

150

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

demolitions - I agree, it does indeed look that way. But what do
/ know? I’m no expert. It’s not like I’ve seen, in person or on
him, numerous examples of buildings collapsing due to controlled
demolition and numerous other examples of buildings collapsing
due to planes crashing into them, so I could make an intelligent
distinction. We are told by the 9/11 truth people that no building
constructed like the towers has ever collapsed due to hre. But
how about hre plus a full-size, loaded airplane smashing into it?
How many examples of that do we have?

But there’s at least one argument those who support the official
version use against the skeptics that I would question. It’s the argu-
ment that if the government planned the operation there would have
to have been many people in on the plot, and surely by now one
of them would have talked and the mainstream media would have
reported their stories. But in fact a number of firemen, the build-
ings’ janitor, and others have testihed to hearing many explosions
in the towers some time after the planes crashed, supporting the
theory of planted explosives. But scarce little of this has made it to
the mainstream media. Similarly, following the JFK assassination
at least two men came forward afterward and identified themselves
as being one of the three ‘tramps’ on the grassy knoll in Dallas.
So what happened? The mainstream media ignored them both. I
know of them only because the tabloid press ran their stories. One
of the men was the father of actor Woody Harrelson.

But I do wish you guys in the 9/11 Truth Movement luck; if
you succeed in proving that it was an inside job, that would do
more to topple the empire than anything I have ever written.

Lockerbie: don’t believe anything until
it’s been officially denied

Abdelbaset Ali Molnned al-Megrahi was a Libyan who spent eight
years in a Scottish prison charged with the bombing of PanAm

CONSPIRACIES

151

flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988, which
took the lives of 270 people. Many of those who investigated the
case, including several in prominent establishment legal positions,
argued for years that the evidence against Megrahi was exceed-
ingly thin and unpersuasive. At one point a court in Scotland
appeared to agree and ordered a new appeal for Megrahi. But
then Megrahi was released back to Libya because of terminal
cancer, from which he died in 2012.

Briefly, the key international political facts are these. For well
over a year after the bombing, the LTS and the LTK insisted that
Iran, Syria, and a Palestinian group, the PFLP-GC, had been
behind the bombing, allegedly done at the behest of Iran as
revenge for the US shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane
over the Persian Gulf on July 3, 1988, which claimed 290 lives.
(An act the LTS called an accident, but which came about because
of deliberate American intrusion into the Iran-Iraq war on the
side of Iraq.)

Then the buildup to the US invasion of Iraq came along in
1990 (how quickly do nations change from allies to enemies on
the empire’s chessboard) and the support of Iran and Syria was
desired for the operation. Suddenly, in October 1990, the US
declared that it was Libya - the Arab state least supportive of the
US buildup to the Gulf War and the sanctions imposed against
Iracj - that was behind the bombing after all. Megrahi and another
Libyan were fingered.

The PFLP-GC was headquartered in, financed by, and closely
supported by Syria. The support for the scenario described above
was, and remains, impressive, as the following sample indicates:
In April 1989, the FBI leaked the news that it had tentatively
identified the person who unwittingly carried the bomb aboard
the plane. His name was Khalid Jaafar, a 21-year-old Lebanese
American. The report said that the bomb had been planted in
Jaafar’s suitcase by a member of the PFLP-GC.

152

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

In May, the State Department stated that the CIA was ‘confi-
dent’ of the Iran/Syria/PFLP-GC account of events. Then The
Times in London reported that ‘security officials from Britain,
the United States and West Germany were “totally satisfied”
that it was the PFLP-GC’ behind the crime. In December 1989,
Scottish investigators announced that they had ‘hard evidence’
of the involvement of the PFLP-GC in the bombing. A National
Security Agency electronic intercept disclosed that Ali Akbar
Mohtashemi, Iranian interior minister, had paid Palestinian ter-
rorists $10 million dollars to gain revenge for the downed Iranian
airplane. Israeli intelligence also intercepted a communication
between Mohtashemi and the Iranian embassy in Beirut ‘indicat-
ing that Iran paid for the Lockerbie bombing.’

For many more details about this case, which cast even greater
doubt upon the official version of Libyan guilt, with full documen-
tation, see killinghope.org/bblum6/panam.htm (‘I am absolutely
astounded, astonished,’ said the Scottish law professor who was
the architect of the trial. ‘I was extremely reluctant to believe that
any Scottish judge would convict anyone, even a Libyan, on the
basis of such evidence.’)

And, by the way, Libya under Gaddafi never confessed to
having carried out the act. They only took ‘responsibility,’ in the
hope of getting various sanctions against them ended.

The conspiracy to trivialize conspiracy theories

During the Cold War when Washington was confronted with a
charge of covert American misbehavior abroad, it was common
to imply that the Russkies or some other nefarious commies
were behind the spread of such tales; this was usually enough to
discredit the story in the mind of any right-thinking American.
Since that period, the standard defense against uncomfortable ac-
cusations and questions has been a variation of ‘Oh, that sounds

CONSPIRACIES

153

like a conspiracy theory’ (chuckle, chuckle). Every White House
press secretary learns that before his first day on the job.

Ironically, Pierre Salinger, press secretary to presidents
Kennedy and Johnson, was himself on the receiving end of this
practice. When he died on October 16, 2004, the Washington
Post obituary included this: ‘His journalistic reputation was
besmirched in the 1990s, however, after his insistence that two
major airline crashes were not what they seemed. He said that the
1988 explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland
was a Drug Enforcement Agency operation that went wrong - a
theory for which no evidence materialized.’ 1 (There is, in fact,
much more evidence in support of the incidental DEA role than
of the Libyan role.)

‘Conspiracy’ researcher and author Jonathan Vankin has
observed:

Journalists like to think of themselves as a skeptical lot. This is a
flawed self-image. The thickest pack of American journalists are
all too credulous when dealing with government officials, technical
experts, and other official sources. They save their vaunted ‘skepti-
cism’ for ideas that feel unfamiliar to them. Conspiracy theories are
treated with the most rigorous skepticism.

Conspiracy theories should be approached skeptically. But
there’s no fairness. Skepticism should apply equally to official and
unofficial information. 2

YUGOSLAVIA

The international left still in bitter dispute

The events in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s were very
contentious at the time and remain so today; contentious not only
between the usual supporters and foes of American imperialism,
but among those on the left. There has been hardly any issue in
modern times that has divided the international left as much as
this one; arguments about the US/NATO ‘humanitarian interven-
tion’ still pop up as a result of current events; the overthrow of the
Libyan government in 2011 is the latest example - was it carried
out to rescue the Libyan people from a terrible tyrant, or was it
to remove Muammar Gaddafi because of his long history of not
catering to the Western powers as they are accustomed to being
catered to? The same question applies to Serbian leader Slobodan
Milosevic, who had refused to fall happily under the dominion of
the US/NATO/European Union/World Bank/IMF/WTO world
government. The quasi-socialist Serbian state was regarded as
Europe’s last ‘communist’ holdout. Moreover, post-Cold War,
NATO needed to demonstrate a raison d’etre if it was to remain
alive as Washington’s enforcement thug.

One of the key issues in contention has been Kosovo. The
prolonged US/NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia in 1999,

YUGOSLAVIA

155

the world was assured, was in response to the ‘ethnic cleansing’
being carried out by the Serbian government against their ancient
province of Kosovo. Numerous intelligent, well-meaning people
remain convinced that the bombing took place after the mass
forced deportation of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo was well
under way; which is to say that the bombing was launched in
response to and to stop this ‘ethnic cleansing.’ In actuality, the
systematic forced deportations of large numbers of people from
Kosovo did not begin until a few days after the bombing began,
and was clearly a reaction to it, born of extreme anger and power-
lessness on the part of the Serb leaders. This is easily verified by
looking at a daily newspaper for the few days before the bombing
began, the night of March 23/24, and the few days after. Or simply
look at the New York Times of March 26, page 1, which reads:
‘with the NATO bombing already begun, a deepening sense of
fear took hold in Pristina [Kosovo’s main city] that the Serbs
would now vent their rage against ethnic Albanian civilians in
retaliation’ (emphasis added). Only on March 27 do we find the
first reference to a ‘forced march’ or anything of that sort. But
the propaganda version is already set in marble.

Victors’ justice and impunity

(August 5, 2008)

So, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has finally
been apprehended. He’s slated to appear before the International
Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The
Hague, Netherlands, charged with war crimes, genocide, and
crimes against humanity.

The ICTY was created by the United Nations in 1993. Its
full name is ‘The International Tribunal for the Prosecution
of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International
Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former

156

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

Yugoslavia since 1991’. Notice the ‘who’ - ‘Persons Responsible
for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law.’ Notice
the ‘where’ - ‘Territory of the Former Yugoslavia.’ This is all
spelled out in the statute of the Tribunal. 1

In 1999, NATO (primarily the United States) bombed the
Yugoslav republic of Serbia for seventy-eight consecutive days,
ruining the economy, the ecology, power supply, bridges, apart-
ment buildings, transportation, infrastructure, churches, schools,
pushing the country many years back in its development, killing
hundreds or thousands of people, traumatizing countless chil-
dren, who’ll be reacting unhappily to certain sounds and sights for
perhaps the remainder of their days; the most ferocious sustained
bombing of a nation in the history of the world, at least up to that
time. Nobody has ever suggested that Serbia had attacked or was
preparing to attack a member state of NATO, and that is the only
event which justifies a reaction under the NATO treaty.

The ICTY has already held one high-level trial in an attempt to
convince the world of the justice of the NATO bombing - former
Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, who died in his Hague
prison while trying to defend himself against charges that remain
unproven. Radovan Karadzic is next. When will the Western
leaders behind the bombing of Serbia be tried for war crimes, as
called for by the Tribunal’s own statute, as noted above?

Shortly after the bombing began in March, 1999, professionals
in international law from Canada, the United Kingdom, Greece,
and the United States began to hie complaints with the ICTY
charging leaders of NATO countries with ‘grave violations of
international humanitarian law,’ including:

wilful killing, wilfully causing great suffering and serious injury
to body and health, employment of poisonous weapons and other
weapons to cause unnecessary suffering, wanton destruction of
cities, towns and villages, unlawful attacks on civilian objects,
devastation not necessitated by military objectives, attacks on

YUGOSLAVIA

157

undefended buildings and dwellings, destruction and wilful
damage done to institutions dedicated to religion, charity and
education, the arts and sciences.

The Canadian suit named sixty-eight leaders, including William
Clinton, Madeleine Albright, William Cohen, Tony Blair, Cana-
dian prime minister Jean Chretien, and NATO officials Javier
Solana, Wesley Clark, and Jamie Shea. The complaint also alleged
‘open violation’ of the United Nations Charter, the NATO treaty
itself, the Geneva Conventions, and the Principles of Interna-
tional Law Recognized by the International Military Tribunal
at Nuremberg.

The complainants’ briefs pointed out that the prosecution of
those named by them was ‘not only a requirement of law, it is a
requirement of justice to the victims and of deterrence to powerful
countries such as those in NATO who, in their military might and
in their control over the media, are lacking in any other natural
restraint such as might deter less powerful countries.’ Charging
the war’s victors, not only its losers, it was argued, would be a
watershed in international criminal law.

In a letter to Louise Arbour, the court’s chief prosecutor,
Michael Mandel, a professor of law in Toronto and the initiator
of the Canadian suit, stated:

Unfortunately, as you know, many doubts have already been raised
about the impartiality of your Tribunal. In the early days of the
conflict, after a formal and, in our view, justified complaint against
NATO leaders had been laid before it by members of the Faculty
of Law of Belgrade University, you appeared at a press conference
with one of the accused, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook,
who made a great show of handing you a dossier of Serbian war
crimes. In early May, you appeared at another press conference
with US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, by that time herself
the subject of two formal complaints of war crimes over the target-
ing of civilians in Yugoslavia . 2

158

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

Arbour herself made little attempt to hide the pro-NATO bias she
wore beneath her robe. She trusted NATO to be its own police,
judge, jury, and prison guard. Here are her words:

I am obviously not commenting on any allegations of violations of
international humanitarian law supposedly perpetrated by nation-
als of NATO countries. I accept the assurances given by NATO
leaders that they intend to conduct their operations in the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia in full compliance with international
humanitarian law. 3

The ICTY on its website tells us: ‘By holding individuals
accountable regardless of their position, the ICTY’s work has
dismantled the tradition of impunity for war crimes and other
serious violations of international law, particularly by individuals
who held the most senior positions.’ 4 US/NATO leaders, however,
have immunity not only for the 1999 bombings of Serbia, but the
many bombings of Bosnia in the period 1993-95, including the
use of depleted uranium. ‘Dismantling the tradition of impunity’
indeed.

Arbour was succeeded in 1999 as the ICTY’s chief prosecutor
by Carla Del Ponte, a Swiss diplomat. In accordance with her
official duties, she looked into possible war crimes of all the
participants in the conflicts of the 1990s surrounding the breakup
of Yugoslavia and the NATO bombing of Serbia and its province
of Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians were trying to secede. In late
December 1999, in an interview with the London Observer , Del
Ponte was asked if she was prepared to press criminal charges
against NATO personnel (and not just against the former Yugo-
slav republics). She replied: ‘If I am not willing to do that, I am
not in the right place. I must give up my mission.’

The Tribunal then announced that it had completed a study
of possible NATO crimes, declaring: ‘It is very important for
this tribunal to assert its authority over any and all authorities
to the armed conflict within the former Yugoslavia.’ Was this a

YUGOSLAVIA

159

sign from heaven that the new millennium (2000 was but a week
away) was going to be one of more equal international justice?
Could this really be?

No, it couldn’t. From official quarters, military and civilian,
of the United States and Canada, came disbelief, shock, anger,
denials . . . ‘appalling’ . . . ‘unjustified’. Del Ponte got the message.
Her office quickly issued a statement: ‘NATO is not under investi-
gation by the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Crimi-
nal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. There is no formal inquiry
into the actions of NATO during the conflict in Kosovo. 5

Del Ponte remained in her position until the end of 2007,
leaving to become the Swiss ambassador to Argentina; at the
same time writing a book about her time with the Tribunal, The
Hunt: Me and War Criminals. The book created something
of a scandal in Europe, for in it she revealed how the Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA) abducted hundreds of Serbs in 1999,
and took them to Kosovo’s fellow Muslims in Albania where they
were killed, their kidneys and other body parts then removed and
sold for transplant in other countries.

The KLA for years before and since has been engaging in other
charming activities, such as heavy trafficking in drugs, trafficking
in women, various acts of terrorism, and carrying out ethnic
cleansing of Serbs who have had the bad fortune to be in Kosovo
because it has long been their home. 6 Between 1998 and 2002, the
KLA appeared at times on the State Department terrorism list;
at first because of its tactic of targeting innocent Serb civilians
in order to provoke retaliation from Serb troops; later because
mujahideen mercenaries from various Islamic countries, including
some groups tied to al-Qaeda, were fighting alongside the KLA,
as they were in Bosnia with the Bosnian Muslims during the
1990s’ Yugoslav civil wars. The KLA remained on the terrorist
list until the United States decided to make them an ally, partly
due to the existence of a major American military base in Kosovo,

l60 AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

Camp Bondsteel. (It’s remarkable, is it not, how these American
bases pop up all around the world?) In November 2005, following
a visit there, Alvaro Gil-Robles, the human rights envoy of the
Council of Europe, described the camp as a ‘smaller version of
Guantanamo.’ 7

On February 17, 2008, in a move of highly questionable inter-
national legality, the KLA declared the independence of Kosovo
from Serbia. The next day the United States recognized this new
‘nation,’ thus affirming the unilateral declaration of independence
of a part of another country’s territory. The new country has as
its prime minister a gentleman named Hashim Thaci, described
in Del Ponte’s book as the brain behind the abductions of Serbs
and the sale of their organs. The new gangster state of Kosovo is
supported by Washington and other Western powers who can’t
forgive Serbia-Yugoslavia-Milosevic for not wanting to whole-
heartedly embrace the NATO/US/European Union triumvirate,
which recognizes no higher power, United Nations or other. The
independent state of Kosovo is regarded as reliably pro-West, a
state that will serve as a militarized outpost for the triumvirate.

In her book, Del Ponte asserts that there was sufficient evidence
for prosecution of Kosovo Albanians involved in war crimes, but
the investigation ‘was nipped in the bud,’ focusing instead on
‘the crimes committed by Serbia.’ She claims that she could do
nothing because it was next to impossible to collect evidence in
Kosovo, which was swarming with criminals, in and out of the
government. Witnesses were intimidated, and even judges in The
Hague were afraid of the Kosovo Albanians. 8

LIBYA

Arguing Libya

On July 9, 2011 I took part in a demonstration in front of the
White House, the theme of which was ‘Stop Bombing Libya.’
The last time I had taken part in a protest against US bombing
of a foreign country which the White House was selling as a
‘humanitarian intervention,’ as they did in Libya, was in 1999
during the prolonged bombing of Serbia. At that time I went to
a couple of such demonstrations and both times I was virtually
the only American there. The rest, maybe two dozen, were almost
all Serbs. ‘Humanitarian intervention’ is a great selling device
for imperialism, particularly in the American market. Americans
are desperate to renew their precious faith that the United States
means well, that we are still ‘the good guys.’

This time there were about a hundred taking part in the
protest. I don’t know if any were Libyans, but there was a new
element - almost half of the protesters were black, marching with
signs saying: ‘Stop Bombing Africa.’

There was another new element: people supporting the bombing
of Libya, facing us from their side of Pennsylvania Avenue about
40 feet away. They were made up largely of Libyans, probably
living in the area, who had only praise and love for the United

162

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

States and NATO. Their theme was that Gaddafi was so bad
that they would support anything to get rid of him, even daily
bombing of their homeland, which eventually exceeded Serbia’s
seventy-eight days. I of course crossed the road and got into
arguments with some of them. I kept asking: ‘I hate that man
there [pointing to the White House] just as much as you hate
Gaddafi. Do you think I should therefore support the bombing of
Washington? Destroying the beautiful monuments and buildings
of this city, as well as killing people?’

None of the Libyans even tried to answer my question. They
only repeated their anti-Gaddafi vitriol. ‘You don’t understand.
We have to get rid of Gaddafi. He’s very brutal.’ (See the CNN
video of the July 1 mammoth pro-Gaddafi rally in Tripoli for an
indication that these Libyans’ views were far from universal at
home: www.mathaba.net/news/?x=627i96?rss)

‘But you at least get free education and medical care,’ I pointed
out. ‘That’s a lot more than we get here. And Libya has the
highest standard of living in the entire region, at least it did before
the NATO and US bombing. If Gaddafi is brutal, what do you
call all the other leaders of the region, whom Washington has
long supported?’ One retorted that there had been free education
under the king, whom Gaddafi had overthrown. I was skeptical of
this but I didn’t know for sure that it was incorrect, so I replied:
‘So what? Gaddafi at least didn’t get rid of the free education like
leaders in Britain and Europe did in recent years.’

A police officer suddenly appeared and forced me to return to
my side of the road. I’m sure if pressed for an explanation, the
officer would have justified this as a means of preventing violence
from breaking out. But there was never any danger of that at all;
another example of the American police-state mentality - order
and control come before civil liberties, before anything.

Most Americans overhearing my argument with the Libyans
would probably have interjected something like: ‘Well, no matter

LIBYA

163

how much you hate the president you can still get rid of him
with an election. The Libyans can’t do that.’ And I would have
come back with: ‘Right. I have the freedom to replace George W.
Bush with Barack H. Obama. Oh joy. As long as our elections are
overwhelmingly determined by money, nothing of any significance
will change.’

It doesn’t matter to them if it’s untrue. It’s a higher truth.

(November 1, 2011)

‘We came, we saw, he died.’ The words of US Secretary of State,
Hillary Clinton, giggling, as she spoke of the depraved murder
of Muammar Gaddafi.

Imagine Osama bin Laden or some other Islamic leader speak-
ing of 9/11: ‘We came, we saw, 3,000 died... ha-ha.’

Clinton and her partners-in-crime in NATO can also have
a good laugh at how they deceived the world. The destruction
of Libya, the reduction of a modern welfare state to piles of
rubble, to ghost towns, the murder of perhaps thousands . . . this
tragedy was the culmination of a series of falsehoods spread by
the Libyan rebels, the Western powers, and Qatar (through its
television station, A 1 Jazeera) - from the declared imminence of a
‘bloodbath’ in rebel-held Benghazi if the West didn’t intervene to
stories of government helicopter gunships and airplanes spraying
gunfire onto large numbers of civilians to tales of Viagra-induced
mass rapes by Gaddafi’s army. (This last fable was proclaimed
at the United Nations by the American ambassador, as if young
soldiers were in need of Viagra!) 1

The New York Times (March 22, 2011) observed: ‘The rebels
feel no loyalty to the truth in shaping their propaganda, claiming
nonexistent battlefield victories, asserting they were still fighting
in a key city days after it fell to Qaddah forces, and making vastly
inflated claims of his barbaric behavior.’

164

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

The Los Angeles Times (April 7, 2011) added this about the
rebels’ media operation:

It’s not exactly fair and balanced media. In fact, as [its editor]

helpfully pointed out, there are four inviolate rules of coverage on

the two rebel radio stations, TV station and newspaper:

• No pro- [Gaddafi] reportage or commentary.

• No mention of a civil war. (The Libyan people, east and west,
are unified in a war against a totalitarian regime.)

• No discussion of tribes or tribalism. (There is only one tribe:
Libya.)

• No references to A1 Qaeda or Islamic extremism. (That’s
[Gaddafi’s] propaganda.)

The Libyan government undoubtedly spouted its share of
misinformation as well, but it was the rebels’ trail of lies, of both
omission and commission, which was used by the UN Security
Council to justify its vote for ‘humanitarian intervention’; fol-
lowed in Act Three by unrelenting NATO/US bombs and drone
missiles, day after day, week after week, month after month; you
can’t get much more humanitarian than that. If the people of
Libya prior to the NATO/US bombardment had been offered
a referendum on the aerial attacks, can it be imagined that they
would have endorsed it?

In fact, it appears rather likely that a majority of Libyans
supported Gaddafi. How else could the government have held
off the most powerful military forces in the world for more than
seven months? Before NATO and the US laid waste to the land,
Libya had the highest life expectancy, lowest infant mortality,
and highest UN Human Development Index in Africa. During
the first few months of the civil war, giant rallies were held in
support of the Libyan leader. 2

If Gaddafi had been less oppressive of his political opposition
over the years and had made some gestures of accommodation to
them during the Arab Spring, the benevolent side of his regime

LIBYA

165

might still be keeping him in power, although the world has
plentiful evidence making it plain that the Western powers are
not particularly concerned about political oppression except to
use as an excuse for intervention when they want to; indeed,
government files seized in Tripoli during the fighting show that
the CIA and British intelligence worked with the Libyan govern-
ment in tracking down dissidents, turning them over to Libya,
and taking part in interrogations. 3

In any event, many of the rebels had a religious motive for
opposing the government and played dominant roles within the
rebel army; previously a number of them had fought against the
United States in Afghanistan and Iraq. 4 The new Libyan regime
promptly announced that Islamic sharia law would be the ‘basic
source’ of legislation, and laws that contradict ‘the teachings of
Islam’ would be nullified. There would also be a reinstitution of
polygamy; the Muslim holy book, the Quran, allows men up to
four wives. 5

Thus, just as in Afghanistan in the 1980-90S, the United
States has supported Islamic militants fighting against a secular
government. The US also fought on the same side as the Islamic
militants in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Syria. The American govern-
ment has imprisoned many people as ‘terrorists’ in the United
States for a lot less than supporting al-Qaeda types.

What began in Libya as ‘normal’ civil war violence from both
sides - repeated before and since by the governments of Egypt,
Tunisia, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria without any Western military
intervention (the US continues to arm the Bahrain and Yemen
regimes) - was transformed by the Western propaganda machine
into a serious Gaddafi genocide of innocent Libyans. Addressing
the validity of this key issue is another video, Humanitarian War
in Libya: There Is No Evidence , 6 The main feature of the film is
an interview with Soliman Bouchuiguir, secretary general, and
one of the founders in 1989, of the Libyan League for Human

i66

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

Rights, perhaps the leading Libyan dissident group, in exile in
Switzerland. Bouchuiguir is asked several times if he can docu-
ment various charges made against the Libyan leader. Where is
the proof of the many rapes? The many other alleged atrocities?
The more than 6,000 civilians alleged killed by Gaddafi’s planes?
Again and again Bouchuiguir cites the National Transitional
Council as the source. Yes, that’s the rebels who carried out the
civil war in conjunction with the NATO/US forces. At other
times Bouchuiguir speaks of ‘eyewitnesses’: ‘little girls, boys who
were there, whose families we know personally.’ After a while he
declares that ‘there is no way’ to document these things. This is
probably true to some extent, but why, then, the LTN Security
Council resolution for a military intervention in Libya? Why
almost eight months of bombing?

Bouchuiguir also mentions his organization’s working with the
National Endowment for Democracy in its effort against Gaddafi,
and one has to wonder if the man has any idea that the NED was
founded to be a front for the CIA.

Another source of charges against Gaddafi and his sons
has been the International Criminal Court. The Court’s
chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, is shown in the him
Humanitarian War in Libya at a news conference discussing
the same question of proof of the charges. He refers to an ICC
document of seventy-seven pages which he says contains the
evidence. The him displays the document’s table of contents,
which shows that pages 17-71 are not available to the public;
these pages, apparently the ones containing the testimony and
evidence, are marked as ‘redacted.’ In an appendix, the ICC
report lists its news sources; these include Fox News, CNN, the
CIA, Soliman Bouchuiguir, and the Libyan League for Human
Rights. Earlier, the him had presented Bouchuiguir citing the
ICC as one of his sources. The documentation is thus a closed
circle.

LIBYA

167

Historical footnote: ‘Aerial bombing of civilians was pioneered
by the Italians in Libya exactly a century ago, 1911, perfected by
the British in Iraq in 1920 and used by the French in 1925 to
level whole quarters of Syrian cities. Home demolitions, collec-
tive punishment, summary execution, detention without trial,
routine torture - these were the weapons of Europe’s takeover’
in the Mideast. 7

Unending American hostility

(July 1, 2011)

If I could publicly ask our beloved president Barack Obama one
question, it would be this: ‘Mr President, in your short time in
office you’ve waged war against six countries - Iraq, Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and Libya. This makes me wonder
something. With all due respect: what is wrong with you?’

The American media has done its best to dismiss or ignore
Libyan charges that NATO/US missiles have been killing civil-
ians (the people they’re supposedly protecting), at least up until
the recent bombing ‘error’ that was too blatant to be covered up.
But who in the mainstream media has questioned the NATO/US
charges that Libya was targeting and ‘massacring’ Libyan civil-
ians a few months ago, which, we’ve been told, is the reason for
the Western powers’ attacks? Don’t look to A 1 Jazeera for such
questioning. The government of Qatar, which owns the station,
has a deep-seated animosity toward Libyan leader Muammar
Gaddafi and was itself a leading purveyor of the Libyan ‘mas-
sacre’ stories, as well as playing a military role itself in the war
against Tripoli. A 1 Jazeera’s reporting on the subject has been
remarkably slanted.

Alain Juppe, foreign minister of France, which has been the
leading force behind the attacks on Libya, spoke at the Brook-
ings Institution in Washington on June 7, 2011. After his talk he

i68

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

was asked a question from the audience by local activist Ken
Meyercord:

An American observer of events in Libya has commented: ‘The
evidence was not persuasive that a large-scale massacre or genocide
was either likely or imminent.’ That comment was made by Rich-
ard Haass, President of our Council on Foreign Relations. If Mr.
Haass is right, and he’s a fairly knowledgeable fellow, then what
NATO has done in Libya is attack a country that wasn’t threaten-
ing anyone; in other words, aggression. Are you at all concerned
that as NATO deals more and more death and destruction on the
people of Libya that the International Criminal Court may decide
that you and your friends in the Naked Aggression Treaty Organi-
zation should be prosecuted rather than Mr. Gaddafi?

Monsieur Juppe then stated, without attribution, somebody’s
estimate that 15,000 Libyan civilians had been killed by pro-
Gaddab forces. To which Mr. Meyercord replied: ‘So where are
the 15,000 bodies?’ M. Juppe failed to respond to this, although
in the tumult caused by the first question it was not certain that
he had heard the second one. 8

It should be noted that, as of June 30, 2011 NATO had flown
13,184 air missions (sorties) over Libya, 4,963 of which are de-
scribed as strike sorties. 9

If any foreign power bred missiles at the United States, would
Barack Obama regard that as an act of war? If the US bring many
hundreds of missiles at Libya is not an act of war, as Obama
insists (to avoid having to declare war as required by US law),
then the deaths resulting from the missile attacks are murder.
That’s it. It’s either war or murder. To the extent there’s a dif-
ference between the two.

It should be further noted that since Gaddab came to power
in 1969 there has virtually never been a sustained period when
the United States has been prepared to treat him and the many
positive changes he’s instituted in Libya and Africa with any
respect. 10

LIBYA

169

A word from the man the world’s mightiest military power
spent years trying to kill

The following is an excerpt from Recollections of My Life , written
by Col. Muammar Gaddafi, April 8 , 2011:

Now, I am under attack by the biggest force in military history,
my little African son, Obama wants to kill me, to take away the
freedom of our country, to take away our free housing, our free
medicine, our free education, our free food, and replace it with
American style thievery, called ‘capitalism,’ but all of us in the
Third World know what that means, it means corporations run
the countries, run the world, and the people suffer, so, there is no
alternative for me, I must make my stand, and if Allah wishes, I
shall die by following his path, the path that has made our country
rich with farmland, with food and health, and even allowed us to
help our African and Arab brothers and sisters to work here with
us ... I do not wish to die, but if it comes to that, to save this land,
my people, all the thousands who are all my children, then so be
it. ... In the West, some have called me ‘mad’, ‘crazy’. They know
the truth but continue to lie, they know that our land is independ-
ent and free, not in the colonial grip.

LATIN AMERICA

The crime of GWS - governing while socialist

(December 11, 2007)

In Chile, during the 1964 presidential election campaign, in which
Salvador Allende, a Marxist, was running against two other major
candidates much to his right, one radio spot featured the sound
of a machine gun, followed by a woman’s cry: ‘They have killed
my child - the communists.’ The announcer then added in impas-
sioned tones: ‘Communism offers only blood and pain. For this
not to happen in Chile, we must elect Eduardo Frei president.’ 1
Frei was the candidate of the Christian Democratic Party, the
majority of whose campaign costs were underwritten by the CIA,
according to the US Senate. 2 One anti-Allende campaign poster
which appeared in the thousands showed children with a hammer
and sickle stamped on their foreheads. 3

The scare campaign played up to the fact that women in Chile,
as elsewhere in Latin America, are traditionally more religious
than men, more susceptible to being alarmed by the specter of
‘godless, atheist communism’.

Allende lost. He won the men’s vote by 67,000 over Frei (in
Chile men and women vote separately), but among the women
Frei came out ahead by 469,000 - testimony, once again, to the

LATIN AMERICA

171

remarkable ease with which the minds of the masses can be
manipulated, in any and all societies.

In Venezuela, during the 2007 campaign concerning the consti-
tutional reforms put forth by Hugo Chavez, the opposition played
to the same emotional themes of motherhood and ‘communist’ op-
pression. (Quite possibly because of similar CIA advice.) ‘I voted
for Chavez for President, but not now. Because they told me that
if the reform passes, they’re going to take my son, because he will
belong to the state,’ said a woman, Gladys Castro, interviewed in
Venezuela before the vote for a report by Venezuelanalysis.com,
an English-language news service published by North Americans
in Caracas. The report added:

Gladys is not the only one to believe the false rumors she’s heard.
Thousands of Venezuelans, many of them Chavez supporters, have
bought the exaggerations and lies about Venezuela’s Constitutional
Reform that have been circulating across the country for months.
Just a few weeks ago, however, the disinformation campaign
ratcheted up various notches as opposition groups and anti-reform
coalitions placed large ads in major Venezuelan papers. The most
outrageous was ... [a] two-page spread in the country’s largest
circulation newspaper, Ultimas Noticias , which claimed about the
Constitutional Reform: ‘If you are a Mother, YOU LOSE! Because
you will lose your house, your family and your children. Children
will belong to the state.’

This particular ad was placed by a Venezuelan business orga-
nization, Camara Industrial de Carabobo, which has among its
members dozens of subsidiaries of the largest US corporations
operating in Venezuela. 4

It’s widely believed that US hostility toward Chavez arises
from Washington’s desire to grab Venezuela’s oil. However, in the
post-World War II period, in Latin America alone, the US has
had a similar contentious policy toward progressive governments
and movements in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras,

172

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

Grenada, the Dominican Republic, Chile, Brazil, Argentina,
Cuba, and Bolivia. What these governments and movements all
had in common was that they were or are leftist; it’s nothing to
do with oil. For more than half a century Washington has been
trying to block the rise of any government in Latin America that
threatens to offer a viable alternative to the capitalist model.
Venezuela of course fits perfectly into that scenario, oil or no
oil. This ideology was the essence of the Cold War all over the
world.

Chavez’s ideological crime is multiplied by his being com-
pletely independent of Washington, using his oil wealth to become
a powerful force in Latin America, inspiring and aiding other
independent-minded governments in the region, like Cuba,
Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador, as well as carrying on close rela-
tions with the likes of China, Russia, and Iran. The man does not
show proper understanding that he’s living in the Yankees’ back
yard; indeed, in the Yankee’s world. The Yankee empire grew
to its present size and power precisely because it did not tolerate
men like Salvador Allende and Hugo Chavez and their quaint
socialist customs. Despite its best efforts, the CIA was unable
to prevent Allende from becoming Chile’s president in 1970.
When subsequent parliamentary elections made it apparent to
the Agency and their Chilean conservative allies that they would
not be able to oust the left from power legally, they instigated a
successful military coup, in 1973, during which Allende died.

In a 1970 memo to President Nixon, Henry Kissinger wrote:
‘The example of a successful elected Marxist government in Chile
would surely have an impact on - and even precedent value for
- other parts of the world, especially in Italy; the imitative spread
of similar phenomena elsewhere would in turn significantly affect
the world balance and our own position in it.’

Chavez has spoken publicly about his being assassinated, and
his government has several times uncovered what they perceived

LATIN AMERICA

173

to be planned assassination attempts, from both domestic and
foreign sources. In addition to the case of Salvador Allende, the
cases of Jaime Roldos, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos,
military leader of Panama, have to be considered. Both were
reformers who refused to allow their countries to become client
states of Washington or American corporations. Both were firm
supporters of the radical Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua; both
banned an American missionary group, the Summer Institute of
Linguistics - long suspected of CIA ties - because of suspicious
political behavior; both died in mysterious plane crashes during
the Reagan administration in 1981, Torrijos’s plane exploding in
midair. 5 Torrijos had earlier been marked for assassination by
Richard Nixon. 6

In contrast to the cases of Roldos and Torrijos, over the years,
the United States has gotten along just fine with brutal dictators,
mass murderers, torturers, and leaders who did nothing to relieve
the poverty of their populations - Augusto Pinochet, Pol Pot,
the Greek Junta, Ferdinand Marcos, Suharto, Duvalier, Mobutu,
the Brazilian Junta, Sornoza, Saddam Hussein, South African
apartheid leaders, Portuguese fascists, and so on, all terrible guys,
all seriously supported by Washington for an extended period; for
none made it a regular habit, if ever, publicly to express strong
disrespect for American leaders or their policies.

What if NBC cheered on a military coup against Bush?

(June 8, 2007)

During the Cold War, if an American journalist or visitor to the
Soviet Union reported seeing churches full of people, this was
taken as a sign that the people were rejecting and escaping from
communism. If the churches were empty, this clearly was proof
of the suppression of religion. If consumer goods were scarce,
this was seen as a failure of the communist system. If consumer

174

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

goods appeared to be more plentiful, this gave rise to speculation
about was happening in the Soviet Union that was prompting the
authorities to try to buy off the citizenry . 7

I’m reminded of this kind of thinking concerning Venezuela.
The conservative anti-communist American mind sees things
pertaining to Washington’s newest bete noire in the worst possible
light. If Chavez makes education more widely available to the
masses of poor people, it’s probably for the purpose of indoctri-
nating them. If Chavez invites a large number of Cuban doctors
to Venezuela to treat the poor, it’s a sign of a new and growing
communist conspiracy in Latin America, which includes Evo
Morales, president of Bolivia. If Chavez wins repeated democratic
elections... here’s the former US Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld: ‘I mean, we’ve got Chavez in Venezuela with a lot of
oil money. He’s a person who was elected legally just as Adolf
Hitler was elected legally and then consolidated power and now
is, of course, working closely with Fidel Castro and Mr. Morales
and others .’ 8

The latest manifestation of this mindset is the condemnation
of the Venezuelan government’s refusal to renew the license of
RCTV, a private television station. This has been denounced by
the American government and media, and all other right-thinking
people, as suppression of free speech, even though they all know
very well that the main reason, the sine qua non , for the refusal of
the license renewal has to do with RCTV’s unqualified support
for the 2002 coup that briefly overthrew Chavez. If there was a
successful military coup in the United States and a particular
television station applauded the overthrow of the president (and
the dissolving of Congress and the Supreme Court, as well as the
suspension of the Constitution), and if then the coup was reversed
by other military forces accompanied by mass demonstrations,
and the same television station did not report any of this while
it was happening to avoid giving support to the counter-coup,

LATIN AMERICA

175

and instead kept reporting that the president had voluntarily
resigned. . . how long would it be before the US government, back
in power, shut down the station, arrested its executives, charging
them under half a dozen terrorist laws, and throwing them into
shackles and orange jumpsuits never to be seen again? How long?
Five minutes? The Venezuelan government waited five years,
until the station’s license was due for renewal. And none of the
executives has been arrested. And RCTV is still free to broadcast
via cable and satellite. Is there a country in the entire world that
would be as lenient? 9

It can be said that the media in Venezuela are a lot more free
than in the United States. How many daily newspapers or televi-
sion networks in the United States are unequivocally opposed
to US foreign policy? How many of them in the entire United
States have earned the label ‘opposition media’? Maybe Fox News
when a Democrat is in the White House. Venezuela has lots of
opposition media.

Venezuela: hell hath no fury like an empire scorned

In 2007, Hugo Chavez lost a complicated and extensive reform
referendum, which included removing term limits for the presi-
dency, but he then proposed a more limited reform in 2009 to
eliminate just term limits for all elected offices and he won. The
American media and the opposition in Venezuela have made
it sound as if Chavez was going to be guaranteed office for as
long as he wanted; a veritable dictatorship. But in fact there was
nothing at all automatic about the process - Chavez would have
to be elected each time. It’s not unusual for a nation to have no
term limit for its highest office. France, Germany, and the United
Kingdom, if not most of Europe and much of the rest of the world,
do not have such a limit. The United States did not have a term
limit on the office of the president during the nation’s first 162

176

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

years, until the ratification of the 22nd Amendment in 1951. Were
all American presidents prior to that time dictators?

In 2005, when Colombian President Alvaro Uribe succeeded
in getting term limits lifted, the US mainstream media took
scant notice. President Bush subsequently honored Uribe with
the American Presidential Medal of Freedom. But in the period
leading up to the February 15, 2007 referendum in Venezuela,
the American media were competing with each other over who
could paint Chavez and the Venezuelan constitutional process in
the most critical and ominous terms. Typical was an op-ed in the
Washington Post the day before the vote, which was headlined:
‘Closing in on Hugo Chavez.’ Its opening sentence read: ‘The
beginning of the end is setting in for Hugo Chavez.’ 10

For several years, the campaign to malign Chavez has at times
included issues of Israel and anti-Semitism. The isolated vandal-
ism of a Caracas synagogue on January 30, 2009 fed into this
campaign. Synagogues are of course vandalized occasionally in the
United States and many European countries, but no one ascribes
this to a government policy driven by anti-Semitism. With Chavez
they do. In the American media, the lead-up to the Venezuelan
vote was never far removed from the alleged ‘Jewish’ issue.

‘Despite the government’s efforts to put the [synagogue] con-
troversy to rest,’ the New York Times wrote a few days before the
referendum vote, ‘a sense of dread still lingers among Venezuela’s
12,000 to 14,000 Jews.’ 11

A day earlier, a Washington Post editorial was entitled ‘Mr.
Chavez vs. the Jews - With George W. Bush gone, Venezuela’s
strongman has found new enemies.’ 12 Shortly before, a Post head-
line had informed us ‘Jews in S. America Increasingly Uneasy
- Government and Media Seen Fostering Anti-Semitism in
Venezuela, Elsewhere.’ 13

So commonplace did the Chavez-Jewish association become that
a leading US progressive organization, Council on Hemispheric

LATIN AMERICA

177

Affairs (COHA) in Washington, DC, distributed an article that
read more like the handiwork of a conservative group than a
progressive one. I was prompted to write to them as follows:

Dear People,

Pm very sorry to say that I found your Venezuelan commentary
by Larry Birns and David Rosenblum Felson to be remarkably
lacking. The authors seem unable, or unwilling, to distinguish
between being against Israeli policies from anti-Semitism. It’s kind
of late in the day for them to not have comprehended the differ-
ence. They are forced to fall back on a State Department statement
to make their case. Is that not enough said?

They condemn Chavez likening Israel’s occupation of Gaza
to the Holocaust. But what if it’s an apt comparison? They don’t
delve into this question at all.

They also condemn the use of the word ‘Zionism’, saying that
‘in 9 times out of 10 involving the use of this word in fact smacks of
anti-Semitism.’ Really? Can they give a precise explanation of how
one distinguishes between an anti-Semitic use of the word and a
non-anti-Semitic use of it? That would be interesting.

The authors write that Venezuela’s ‘anti-Israeli initiative . . .
revealingly transcends the intensity of almost every Arabic nation
or normal adversary of Israel.’ Really. Since when are the totally
gutless, dictator Arab nations the standard bearer for progressives?
The ideal we should emulate. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan are
almost never seriously and harshly critical of Israeli policies toward
the Palestinians. Therefore, Venezuela shouldn’t be?

The authors state: ‘In a Christmas Eve address to the nation,
Chavez charged that, “Some minorities, descendants of the same
ones who crucified Christ . . . took all the world’s wealth for them-
selves.” Here, Chavez was not talking so much about Robin Hood,
but rather unquestionably dipping into the lore of anti-Semitism.’
Well, here’s the full quotation: ‘The world has enough for all, but it
turns out that some minorities, descendants of the same ones who
crucified Christ, descendants of the same ones who threw Bolivar
out of here and also crucified him in their own way at Santa Marta
there in Colombia ...’ Hmm, were thejews so active in nineteenth-
century South America?

i 7 8

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

The ellipsis after the word ‘Christ’ indicates that the authors
consciously and purposely omitted the words that would have
given the lie to their premise. Truly astonishing.

(Note: The Reagan administration in 1983 flung charges of
anti-Semitism against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua,
led by Daniel Ortega, who became the head once again in 2007-12
and continuing. 14 Stay tuned. Daniel, watch out.)

The ideology of the ruling class in any society is one that
tries to depict the existing social order as ‘natural’

(February 3, 2007)

In 1972 I traveled by land from San Francisco to Chile, to observe
and report on Salvador Allende’s ‘socialist experiment.’ One of
the lasting impressions of my journey through Latin America is of
the strict class order of the societies I visited. There are probably
very few places in the world where the dividing lines between the
upper and middle classes, on the one hand, and the lower class,
on the other, are more distinct and emotionally clung to, including
Great Britain. In the Chilean capital of Santiago I went to look at a
room in a house advertised by a woman. Because I was American
she assumed that I was anti-Allende, the same assumption she’d
have made if I had been European, for she wanted to believe that
only ‘Indians,’ only poor dumb indigenas and their ilk, supported
the government. She was pleased by the prospect of an American
living in her home and was concerned that he might be getting the
wrong impression about her country. ‘All this chaos,’ she assured
me, ‘it’s not normal, it’s not Chile.’ When I relieved her of her
misconception about me she was visibly confused and hurt, and
I was a little uncomfortable as well, as if I had betrayed her trust.
I made my departure quickly.

There’s the classic Latin American story of the servant of a
family of the oligarchy. He bought steak for his patron's dog, but

LATIN AMERICA

179

his own family ate scraps. He took the dog to the vet, but couldn’t
take his own children to a doctor. And he complained not. In
Chile, under Allende, there was a terribly nagging fear among
the privileged classes that servants no longer knew their place.
(In Sweden, for some years now, they have been able to examine
children of a certain age - their height, weight, and various health
measurements - and not be able to tell which social class the child
is from; they have ended class warfare against children.)

In the 1980s, in Central America, servants rose up in much
of the region against their betters, the latter of course being
unconditionally supported with Yankee money, Yankee arms,
even Yankee lives. At the end of that decade the New York Times
offered some snapshots of El Salvador:

Over canapes served by hovering waiters at a party, a guest said
she was convinced that God had created two distinct classes of
people: the rich and people to serve them. She described herself
as charitable for allowing the poor to work as her servants. ‘It’s the
best you can do,’ she said.

The woman’s outspokenness was unusual, but her attitude is
shared by a large segment of the Salvadoran upper class.

The separation between classes is so rigid that even small
expressions of kindness across the divide are viewed with suspi-
cion. When an American, visiting an ice cream store, remarked
that he was shopping for a birthday party for his maid’s child,
other store patrons immediately stopped talking and began staring
at the American. Finally, an astonished woman in the check-out
line spoke out. ‘You must be kidding,’ she said . 15

The same polarization is taking place now in Venezuela as
Hugo Chavez attempts to build a more egalitarian society. The
Associated Press (January 29, 2007) presented some snapshots
from Caracas. A man of European parents says that at his son’s
private Jewish school some parents are talking about how and
when to leave the country. The man wants a passport for his

i8o

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

io-year-old son in case they need to leave for good. ‘I think we’re
headed toward totalitarianism.’ A middle-class retiree grimaces at
what she sees coming: ‘Within one year, complete communism. . . .
What he’s forming is a dictatorship.’ The fact that Chavez is
himself part indigena and part black, and looks it, can well add
to their animosity toward the man.

I wonder what such people think of George ‘I am the decider’
Bush and his repeated use of ‘signing statements,’ which ef-
fectively mean a law is what he says it is, no more, no less; plus
his Patriot Act, his various assaults on the principle of habeas
corpus, and his expanding surveillance state - to name some
of the scary practices of his authoritarian rule. If Hugo Chavez
tried to institute such measures into Venezuela the accusation of
‘dictatorship’ would have more meaning.

Chuck Kaufman, national co-coordinator of the Washing-
ton-based Nicaragua Network, was with a group which visited
Venezuela last fall. Following is part of his report:

Venezuela is politically polarized. We witnessed the extremes of
this during a dinner with lawyer and author Eva Golinger. Some
very drunk opposition supporters recognized Golinger as author
of The Chavez Code and a strong Chavez partisan. Some of them
surrounded our table and began screaming at Golinger and the
delegation, calling us ‘assassins,’ ‘Cubans,’ and ‘Argentines.’ The
verbal abuse went on for long minutes until waiters ejected the
most out-of-control anti-Chavez woman. We were later told that
she worked in the Attorney General’s office, highlighting one of the
many contradictions arising from the fact that Chavez’s Bolivarian
revolution came into power democratically through the ballot box
rather than by force of arms. Armed revolutions generally sweep
opponents out of government jobs and places of influence such as
the media, but in Venezuela many in the opposition are still in the
civil service and most of the media is virulently anti-Chavez . 16

I admire Hugo Chavez and what he’s trying to do in Venezuela,
but I wish he wouldn’t go out of his way to taunt the Bush

LATIN AMERICA

181

administration, as he does frequently. Doesn’t he know that he’s
dealing with a bunch of homicidal maniacs? Someone please tell
him to cool it or he will endanger his social revolution.

Nicaragua: Operation Because We Can

Captain Ahab had his Moby Dick; Inspector Javert had his Jean
Valjean; the United States has its Fidel Castro. But Washington
also has its Daniel Ortega. For more than thirty years, the most
powerful nation in the world has found it impossible to share
the Western hemisphere with one of its poorest and weakest
neighbors, Nicaragua, if the country’s leader was not in love with
capitalism.

From the moment the Sandinista revolutionaries overthrew the
US-supported Somoza dictatorship in 1979, Washington was con-
cerned about the rising up of that long-dreaded beast - ‘another
Cuba.’ This was war. On the battlefield and in the voting booths.
For almost ten years, the American proxy army, the Contras,
carried out a particularly brutal insurgency against the Sandinista
government and its supporters. In 1984, Washington tried its best
to sabotage the elections, but failed to keep Sandinista leader
Ortega from becoming president. And the war continued. In 1990,
Washington’s electoral tactic was to hammer home the simple and
clear message to the people of Nicaragua: if you re-elect Ortega
all the horrors of the civil war and America’s economic hostility
will continue. Just two months before the election, in December
1989, the United States invaded Panama for no apparent reason
acceptable to international law, morality, or common sense (the
United States naturally called it ‘Operation Just Cause’). One
likely reason it was carried out was to send a clear message to
the people of Nicaragua that this is what they could expect, that
the US-Contra war would continue and even escalate, if they
re-elected the Sandinistas.

182

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

It worked; one cannot overestimate the power of fear, of
murder, rape, and your house being burned down. Ortega lost,
and Nicaragua returned to the rule of the free market, striving
to roll back the progressive social and economic programs that
had been undertaken by the Sandinistas. Within a few years
widespread malnutrition, wholly inadequate access to health care
and education, and other social ills, had once again become a
daily fact of life for the people of Nicaragua.

Each presidential election since then has pitted perennial can-
didate Ortega against Washington’s interference in the process
in shamelessly blatant ways. Pressure has been regularly exerted
on certain political parties to withdraw their candidates so as to
avoid splitting the conservative vote against the Sandinistas. US
ambassadors and visiting State Department officials publicly and
explicitly campaign for anti-Sandinista candidates, threatening
all kinds of economic and diplomatic punishment if Ortega wins,
including difficulties with exports, visas, and vital family remit-
tances by Nicaraguans living in the United States. In the 2001
election, shortly after the September 11 attacks, American officials
tried their best to tie Ortega to terrorism, placing a full-page ad in
the leading newspaper which declared, among other things, that
‘Ortega has a relationship of more than thirty years with states and
individuals who shelter and condone international terrorism.’ 17
That same year a senior analyst in Nicaragua for the international
pollsters Gallup was moved to declare: ‘Never in my whole life
have I seen a sitting ambassador get publicly involved in a sover-
eign country’s electoral process, nor have I ever heard of it.’ 18

Additionally, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
- which would like the world to believe that it’s a private non-
governmental organization, when it’s actually a creation and an
agency of the US government - regularly furnishes large amounts
of money and other aid to organizations in Nicaragua which
are opposed to the Sandinistas. The International Republican

LATIN AMERICA

183

Institute (IRI), a long-time wing of NED, whose chairman is
Arizona Senator John McCain, has also been active in Nicaragua
creating the Movement for Nicaragua, which has helped organize
marches against the Sandinistas. An IRI official in Nicaragua,
speaking to a visiting American delegation in June, 2006, equated
the relationship between Nicaragua and the United States to
that of a son to a father. ‘Children should not argue with their
parents,’ she said.

With the 2006 presidential election in mind, one senior US
official wrote in a Nicaraguan newspaper the year before that
should Ortega be elected, ‘Nicaragua would sink like a stone.’
In March 2006, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, the US ambassador to the
UN under Reagan and a prime supporter of the Contras, came to
visit. She met with members of all the major Sandinista opposi-
tion parties and declared her belief that democracy in Nicaragua
‘is in danger’ but that she had no doubt that the ‘Sandinista
dictatorship’ would not return to power. The following month,
the American ambassador in Managua, Paul Trivelli, who openly
spoke of his disapproval of Ortega and the Sandinista party, sent a
letter to the presidential candidates of conservative parties offering
financial and technical help to unite them for the general election
in November. The ambassador stated that he was responding to
requests by Nicaraguan ‘democratic parties’ for US support in
their mission to keep Daniel Ortega from a presidential victory.
The visiting American delegation reported: ‘In a somewhat
opaque statement Trivelli said that if Ortega were to win, the
concept of governments recognizing governments wouldn’t exist
anymore and it was a nineteenth-century concept anyway. The
relationship would depend on what his government put in place.’
One of the fears of the ambassador likely had to do with Ortega
talking of renegotiating CAFTA, the trade agreement between
the US and Central America, so dear to the hearts of corporate
globalizationists.

184

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

Then, in June, US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick
said it was necessary for the Organization of American States
(OAS) to send a mission of electoral observation to Nicaragua ‘as
soon as possible’ so as to ‘prevent the old leaders of corruption
and communism from attempting to remain in power’ (though
the Sandinistas had not occupied the presidency, only lower
offices, since 1990).

The explicit or implicit message of American pronouncements
concerning Nicaragua was often the warning that if the Sandinis-
tas come back to power, the horrible war, so fresh in the memory
of Nicaraguans, would return. The London Independent reported
in September that ‘One of the Ortega billboards in Nicaragua was
spray-painted “We don’t want another war”. What it was saying
was that if you vote for Ortega you are voting for a possible war
with the US.’ 19

Per capita income in Nicaragua is $900 a year; some 70 per cent
of the people live in poverty. It is worth noting that Nicaragua and
Haiti are the two nations in the Western Hemisphere that the United
States has intervened in the most, from the nineteenth century to
the twenty-first, including long periods of occupation. And they
are today the two poorest in the hemisphere, wretchedly so.

Yankee karma forces them to emigrate

The questions concerning immigration into the United States
from south of the border go on year after year, with the same
issues argued back and forth. What’s the best way to block the
flow into the country? How shall we punish those caught here
illegally? Should we separate families, which happens when
parents are deported but their American-born children remain?
Should the police and various other institutions have the right
to ask for proof of legal residence from anyone they suspect
of being here illegally? Should we punish employers who hire

LATIN AMERICA

185

illegal immigrants? Should we grant amnesty to at least some
of the immigrants already here for years? On and on, round
and round it goes, for decades. Every once in a while someone
opposed to immigration will make it a point to declare that the
United States does not have any moral obligation to take in these
Latino immigrants.

But the counter-argument to the last is almost never mentioned:
yes, the United States does have a moral obligation because so
many of the immigrants are escaping situations in their homelands
made hopeless by American interventions and policy since World
War II. In Guatemala and Nicaragua, Washington overthrew
progressive governments which were sincerely committed to
fighting poverty. In El Salvador the US played a major role in
suppressing a movement striving to install such a government,
and to a lesser extent played such a role in Honduras. And in
Mexico, although Washington has not intervened militarily since
1919, over the years the US has been providing training, arms, and
surveillance technology to Mexico’s police and armed forces to
better their ability to suppress their own people’s aspirations, as
in Chiapas, and this has added to the influx of the impoverished
to the United States. Moreover, Washington’s North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has brought a flood of cheap,
subsidized US agricultural products into Mexico and driven many
Mexican farmers off the land.

The end result of all these policies has been an army of mi-
grants heading north in search of a better life. It’s not that these
people prefer to live in the United States. They’d much rather
remain with their families and friends, be able to speak their
native language at all times, and avoid the hardships imposed on
them by American police and right-wingers.

CUBA

The UN vote on the Cuban embargo: twenty years of
defeat doesn’t discourage the brave American leaders

For years American political leaders and media were fond of
labeling Cuba an ‘international pariah.’ We don’t hear that any
more. Perhaps one reason is the annual vote in the United Nations
General Assembly on the resolution which reads: ‘Necessity of
ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed
by the United States of America against Cuba.’ This is how the
vote has gone (not including abstentions):

1992

YES— NO

59-2

(US, Israel)

1993

88-4

(US, Israel, Albania, Paraguay)

1994

101-2

(US, Israel)

1995

ii 7-3

(US, Israel, Uzbekistan)

1996

138-3

(US, Israel, Uzbekistan)

1997

143-3

(US, Israel, Uzbekistan)

1998

157-2

(US, Israel)

1999

155-2

(US, Israel)

2000

167-3

(US, Israel, Marshall Islands)

2001

167-3

(US, Israel, Marshall Islands)

2002

173-3

(US, Israel, Marshall Islands)

2003

179-3

(US, Israel, Marshall Islands)

2004

179-4

(US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau)

2005

182-4

(US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau)

CUBA

187

2006

183-4

(US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau)

2007

184-4

(US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau)

2008

185-3

(US, Israel, Palau)

2009

187-3

(US, Israel, Palau)

2010

187-2

(US, Israel)

2011

186-2

(US, Israel)

2012

188-3

(US, Israel, Palau)

Each fall the UN vote is a welcome reminder that the world has
not completely lost its senses and that the American empire does
not completely control the opinion of other governments.

How it began. On April 6, i960, Lester D. Mallory, US deputy
assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, wrote in an
internal memorandum: ‘The majority of Cubans support Castro. . .
The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is
through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic
dissatisfaction and hardship. . . . every possible means should
be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba.’
Mallory proposed ‘a line of action which ... makes the greatest
inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease
monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation
and overthrow of government.’ 1 Later that year, the Eisenhower
administration instituted the suffocating embargo against its
eternally declared enemy.

Since the early days of the Cuban Revolution assorted anti-
communists and capitalist true-believers around the world have
been relentless in publicizing the failures, real and alleged, of life
in Cuba; each perceived shortcoming is attributed to the perceived
shortcomings of socialism - it’s simply a system that can’t work,
we are told, given the nature of human beings, particularly in this
modern, competitive, globalized, consumer-oriented world.

In response to many of these criticisms, defenders of Cuban
society have regularly pointed out how the numerous draconian
sanctions imposed by the United States since i960 are largely

i88

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

responsible for most of the problems pointed out by the critics.
The critics, in turn, say that this is just an excuse, one given
by Cuban apologists for every failure of their socialist system.
However, it would be very difficult for the critics to prove their
point. The United States would have to drop all sanctions and
then we’d have to wait long enough for Cuban society to recover
much of what it has lost and demonstrate what its system can do
when not under constant attack by the most powerful nation in
the world.

The sanctions, expanded under the George W. Bush admin-
istration, both in number and in vindictiveness. Washington
adopted sharper reprisals against those who do business with
Cuba or establish relations with the country based on cultural
or tourist exchanges; for example, the US Treasury froze the
accounts in the United States of the Netherlands Caribbean Bank
because it had an office in Cuba, and banned US firms and
individuals from having any dealings with the Dutch bank.

In 2003, the US Treasury Department fined the Alliance of
Baptists $34,000, charging that certain of its members and parish-
ioners of other churches had engaged in tourism during a visit to
Cuba for religious purposes; that is, they had spent money there.
(As George W. once said: ‘U.S. law forbids Americans to travel
to Cuba for pleasure.’ 2 )

American courts and government agencies have helped US
companies expropriate the famous Cuban cigar brand name
Cohiba and the well-known rum Havana Club.

The Bush administration sent a note to American Internet
service providers telling them not to deal with six specified
countries, including Cuba. 3 This is one of several actions
by Washington and American corporations over the years to
restrict Internet availability in Cuba; yet Cuba’s critics claim
that problems with the Internet in Cuba are due to government
suppression.

CUBA

189

Cubans in the United States are limited to how much money
they can send to their families in Cuba, a limit that Washington
imposes only on Cubans and on no other nationals. Not even
during the worst moments of the Cold War was there a general
limit to the amount of money that people in the US could send
to relatives living in the Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe.

In 1999, Cuba filed a suit against the United States for $181.1
billion in compensation for economic losses and loss of life during
the first forty years of this aggression. The suit held Washington
responsible for the death of 3,478 Cubans and the wounding and
disabling of 2,099 others. In the years since, these figures have
of course all increased. The sanctions, in numerous ways large
and small, make acquiring many kinds of products and services
from around the world much more difficult and expensive for
Cuba, often impossible; frequently, they are things indispensable
to Cuban medicine, transportation or industry; or they mean that
Americans and Cubans can’t attend professional conferences in
each other’s countries.

What the fate of the Cuban suit has been is a mystery. It was
reportedly filed in the United Nations and was at one point in the
hands of the UN’s Counter-Terrorism Committee, a committee
made up of all fifteen members of the Security Council, which
of course includes the United States, and which may account for
the inaction on the matter.

The preceding is but a small sample of the excruciating pain
inflicted by the United States upon the body, soul, and economy
of the Cuban people.

Cuba’s sin, like Venezuela’s, which the United States can not
forgive, is to have created a society that can serve as a successful
example of an alternative to the capitalist model, and, moreover, to
have done so under the very nose of the United States. And despite
all the hardships imposed on it by Washington, Cuba has indeed
inspired countless peoples and governments all over the world.

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

190

(Is it of any significance, I wonder, that the two countries of the
Western hemisphere whose governments the United States would
most like to overthrow - Venezuela and Cuba - have the greatest
national obsession with baseball outside of the United States?)

Long-time American writer about Cuba Karen Lee Wald has
observed: ‘The United States has more pens, pencils, candy,
aspirin, etc. than most Cubans have. They, on the other hand,
have better access to health services, education, sports, culture,
childcare, services for the elderly, pride and dignity than most
of us have within reach.’

In a 1996 address to the General Assembly, Cuban Vice
President Carlos Lage stated: ‘Each day in the world 200 million
children sleep in the streets. Not one of them is Cuban.’

Is Cuba a dictatorship?

Why does the mainstream media routinely refer to Cuba as a
dictatorship? Why do some people on the left occasionally do
the same? I think that many of the latter do so in the belief that
to say otherwise runs the risk of not being taken seriously, largely
a vestige of the Cold War when Communists all over the world
were ridiculed for following Moscow’s party line. But what does
Cuba do or lack that makes it a dictatorship? No ‘free press’?
Apart from the question of how free Western media are, if that’s
to be the standard, what would happen if Cuba announced that
from now on anyone in the country could own any kind of media
and print or broadcast whatever they want? How long would it be
before CIA money - secret and unlimited CIA money financing
all kinds of fronts in Cuba - would own or control most of the
media worth owning or controlling?

Is Cuba a dictatorship because it arrests dissidents? Many
thousands of anti-war, Occupy, and other protesters have been
arrested in the United States in recent years, as in most periods

CUBA

191

in American history. Large numbers of them have been beaten by
police and mistreated in other ways while incarcerated.

And remember: the United States is to the Cuban government
what al-Qaeda is to the United States, only much more powerful
and much closer. Since the Cuban Revolution, the United States
and anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the US have inflicted upon Cuba
greater damage and greater loss of life than what happened in
New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. Thus, Cuban
dissidents - who typically have had very close, indeed intimate,
political and financial connections to American government of-
ficials, particularly in Havana through the US Interests Section
- will fall under great suspicion by the Cuban government. Would
the US government ignore a group of Americans receiving funds
from al-Qaeda and engaging in repeated meetings with known
members of that organization? In recent years the United States
has arrested a great many people in the US and abroad solely on
the basis of alleged ties to al-Qaeda, with a lot less evidence to go
on than Cuba has had with its dissidents’ ties to the United States.
Virtually all of Cuba’s ‘political prisoners’ are such dissidents.
While others may call Cuba’s security policies dictatorship, I
call it basic self-defense . 4

Is Washington’s work with Cuban dissidents to be seen as a
purely harmless undertaking? Not done for a purpose? How can
Cuba not feel extremely threatened, even more than the usual
threat of the past fifty or so years? How can they fail to take
precautionary measures?

Is it ‘free elections’ that Cuba lacks? The country regularly
has elections at municipal, regional, and national levels. Money
plays virtually no role in these elections; neither does party
politics, including the Communist Party, since candidates run
as individuals. Again, what is the standard by which Cuban
elections are to be judged? Most Americans, if they gave it any
thought, might find it difficult to even imagine what a free and

192

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

democratic election, without great concentrations of corporate
money, would look like, or how it would operate. Would Ralph
Nader finally be able to get on all fifty state ballots, take part
in national television debates, and be able to match the two
monopoly parties in media advertising? If that were the case,
I think he’d probably win; and that’s why it’s not the case. Or
perhaps what Cuba lacks is the US’s marvelous ‘electoral college’
system, where the presidential candidate with the most votes is
not necessarily the winner. If Americans really think this system
is a good example of democracy, why don’t they use it for local
and state elections as well?

The Cuban elections, which observe universal suffrage and
a secret ballot, are for seats in the Municipal Assemblies, the
Provincial Assemblies, and the National Assembly. There is direct
nomination of candidates by the citizenry, not by the Communist
Party, which does not get involved in any stage of the electoral
process. All candidates have the same public exposure, which is
the publication and posting of a biography listing their qualities
and history, in accessible and commonly visited places in the
community. There is one deputy in the Municipal Assembly
for each 20,000 of population. Candidates must receive over 50
percent of the vote to be elected, if not in the first round then in
a runoff. The 609 members of the National Assembly elect the 31
members of the Council of State. The President of the Council
of State is the head of state and head of government. Fidel Castro
was repeatedly chosen for this position, purportedly because of
his sterling qualities.

I don’t know enough detail about the actual workings of the
Cuban electoral system to point out the flaws and shortcomings of
the above, which most likely exist in practice. But can it be more
deadening to the intellect, the spirit, and one’s idealism than the
American electoral system? From the splashy staged nominating
conventions to the interminable, boring, and insulting campaigns

CUBA

193

to the increasingly questionable voting and counting processes,
all to select one or the other corporate representative... Are the
Cubans ready for this? If they were to institute any kind of elec-
toral system in which those candidates with the most money to
spend had an advantage, what would keep the CIA from pouring
in money-without-end to get its people into office?

Manure of the taurus

(May 2006)

The US Interests Section in Havana has been flashing electronic
messages on its building for the benefit of Cubans passing by.
One message said that Forbes , the weekly financial magazine,
had named Fidel Castro the world’s seventh-wealthiest head of
state, with a fortune estimated at $900 million. This has shocked
Cuban passers by, 5 as well it should in a socialist society that
claims to have the fairest income distribution in the world. Are
you not also shocked, dear readers?

What’s that? You want to know exactly what Forbes based
its rankings on? Well, as it turns out, two months before the
Interests Section flashed its message, Forbes had already stated
that the estimates were ‘more art than science.’ ‘In the past,’ wrote
the magazine, ‘we have relied on a percentage of Cuba’s gross
domestic product to estimate Fidel Castro’s fortune. This year,
we have used more traditional valuation methods, comparing
state-owned assets Castro is assumed to control with comparable
publicly traded companies.’ The magazine gave as examples state-
owned companies such as retail and pharmaceuticals businesses
and a convention center. 6 So there you have it. It was based on
nothing. Inasmuch as the American president ‘controls’ the US
military, shall we assign the value of all the Defense Department
assets to his personal wealth? And the British prime minister’s
personal wealth includes the BBC, does it not?

194

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

Another message flashed by the Interests Section is: ‘In a free
country you don’t need permission to leave the country. Is Cuba
a free country?’ This too is an attempt to blow smoke in people’s
eyes. It implies that there’s some sort of blanket government
restriction or prohibition on travel abroad for Cubans, a limitation
on their ‘freedom.’ However, the main barrier to overseas travel
for most Cubans is financial; they simply can’t afford it. If they
have the money and a visa they can normally fly anywhere, but
it’s very difficult to obtain a visa from the United States unless
you’re part of the annual immigration quota (about 20,000 or so
per year). However, if a Cuban risks his life by trying to cross
the 90 miles of water on some kind of vessel and makes it safely
to Florida he is then granted automatic residence because he’s
now a shining example of ‘fleeing communist tyranny to gain
American freedom.’

Cuba, being a poor country concerned with equality, tries to
make sure that citizens complete their military service or their
social service. Before emigrating abroad, trained professionals
are supposed to give something back to the country for their free
education, which includes medical school and all other schools.
And Cuba, being unceasingly threatened by a well-known country
to the north, must take precautions : certain people in the military
and those who have worked in intelligence or have other sensitive
information may also need permission to travel; this is something
that is found to one extent or another all over the world.

Americans need permission to travel to Cuba. Is the United
States a free country? And Washington makes it rather difficult
for its citizens to obtain permission to travel to Cuba, particularly
for any politically leftist reason. I have applied twice to the US
Treasury Department, and been rejected twice.

Americans on the ‘No-fly list’ can’t go anywhere.

All Americans need permission to leave the country. The
permission slip - of which one must have a sufficient quantity

CUBA

195

- is green and bears the picture of a US president or other
famous American.

The Cuban punching bag ad infinitum

I could scarcely contain my surprise. A National Public Radio
(NPR) newscaster was speaking on August 1, 2006 with an NPR
correspondent who had just left a White House press conference
and was reporting that the president, in response to a question,
had stated that the United States had nothing whatsoever to do
with Israeli policies in Lebanon and Gaza. The newscaster, Alex
Chadwick, then asked the reporter: ‘How do you know what to
believe from the White House?’

Was this a sign of the long-awaited breath of skepticism blowing
in the mainstream media? No, it wasn’t. I’ve made the story up.
What really happened was that the correspondent reported that
the Cuban government had announced that Fidel Castro was
going to have an operation and that his brother, Raul Castro,
would be replacing him temporarily. Chadwick then asked: ‘How
do you know what to believe in Cuba?’ 7

This also really happened: Jay Leno on his August 7, 2006
television program: ‘There’s news of a major medical crisis from
Cuba concerning Fidel Castro. It looks like he’s getting better.’
Think of a US president battling a serious ailment and a broad-
caster on Cuban TV making such a remark.

Why is the United States waging perpetual war
against the Cuban people’s health system?

In January 2011 the government of the United States of America,
acting as middle-man disburser, saw fit to seize $4,207 million
in funds allocated to Cuba by the United Nations Global Fund
to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for the first quarter of

ig6

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

2011. The UN Fund is a $22 billion a year program that works to
combat the three deadly pandemics in 150 countries. 8

‘This mean-spirited policy,’ the Cuban government said, ‘aims
to undermine the quality of service provided to the Cuban
population and to obstruct the provision of medical assistance
in over 100 countries by 40,000 Cuban health workers.’ Most
of the funds are used to import expensive AIDS medication to
Cuba, where antiretroviral treatment is provided free of charge
to some 5,000 HIV patients. 9 Washington sees the Cuban health
system and Havana’s sharing of such as a means of Cuba winning
friends and allies in the Third World, particularly Latin America;
a situation sharply in conflict with long-standing US policy to
isolate Cuba. The United States in recent years has attempted
to counter the Cuban international success by dispatching the
LTS Naval Ship Comfort to the region. With twelve operating
rooms and a 1,000-bed hospital, the converted oil tanker has
performed hundreds of thousands of free surgeries in Central
and South America.

However, the Comfort's port calls likely will not substantially
enhance America’s influence in the hemisphere. ‘It’s hard for
the U.S. to compete with Cuba and Venezuela in this way,’ said
Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a pro-US
policy-research group in Washington. ‘It makes us look like we’re
trying to imitate them. Cuba’s doctors aren’t docked at port for
a couple days, but are in the country for years.’ 10

As mentioned earlier, the 2011 disclosure by WikiLeaks of
US State Department documents included this little item. A
cable was sent by Michael Parmly from the US Interests Section
in Havana in July 2006, during the runup to the Non-Aligned
Movement conference. He notes that he is actively looking for
‘human interest stories and other news that shatters the myth of
Cuban medical prowess.’

CUBA

197

Michael Moore refers to another WikiLeaks State Department
cable: ‘On January 31, 2008, a State Department official stationed
in Havana took a made-up story and sent it back to his headquar-
ters in Washington. Here’s what they came up with:

[The official] stated that Cuban authorities have banned Michael
Moore’s documentary, Sicko , as being subversive. Although the
film’s intent is to discredit the US healthcare system by highlight-
ing the excellence of the Cuban system, the official said the Cuban
regime knows the film is a myth and does not want to risk a
popular backlash by showing to Cubans facilities that are clearly
not available to the vast majority of them.

Moore points out an Associated Press story of June 16, 2007
(seven months prior to the cable) with the headline: ‘Cuban
health minister says Moore’s Sicko shows “human values” of
communist system.’

Moore adds that the people of Cuba were shown the film on
national television on April 25, 2008. ‘The Cubans embraced the
film so much it became one of those rare American movies that
received a theatrical distribution in Cuba. I personally ensured
that a 35 mm print got to the Film Institute in Havana. Screenings
of Sicko were set up in towns all across the country.’ 11

The United States also bans the sale to Cuba of vital medical
drugs and devices, such as the inhalant agent Sevoflurane, which
has become the pharmaceutical of excellence for applying general
anesthesia to children; and the pharmaceutical Dexmetomidine,
of particular usefulness to elderly patients, who often must be
subjected to extended surgical procedures. Both are produced
by the US firm Abbot Laboratories.

Cuban children suffering from lymphoblastic leukemia cannot
use Erwinia L-asparaginasa, a medicine commercially known as
Elspar, since the US pharmaceuticals company Merck refuses to
sell the product to Cuba. Washington has also prohibited the

ig8

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

US -based Pastors for Peace Caravan from donating three Ford
ambulances to Cuba.

Cubans are, moreover, upset by the denial of visas requested to
attend conferences in the field of anesthesiology and reanimation
that take place in the United States. This creates further barriers
for Cuba’s anesthesiologists to update themselves on state-of-
the-art anesthesiology, the care of severely ill patients, and the
advances achieved in the treatment of pain.

The foregoing are but a small sample of American warfare
against the Cuban medical system presented in a Cuban report
to the United Nations General Assembly on October 28, 2009.

Finally, we have the US Cuban Medical Professional Parole
(CMPP) immigration program, which encourages Cuban doctors
who are serving their government overseas to defect and enter
the US immediately as refugees. The Wall Street Journal re-
ported in January 2011 that through December 16, 2010, CMPP
visas had been issued by US consulates in sixty- five countries
to 1,574 Cuban doctors whose education had been paid for by
the financially struggling Cuban government. 12 This program,
oddly enough, was initiated by the US Department of Homeland
Security. Another victory over terrorism? Or socialism? Or are
they the same thing?

Wait until the American conservatives hear that Cuba is the
only country in Latin America offering abortion on demand,
and free.

THE COLD WAR

AND ANTI-COMMUNISM

Flash! The Cold War was not a struggle between the
United States and the Soviet Union (March 5, 2007)

It was a struggle between the United States and the Third World.
People from all over the Third World were fighting for economic
and political changes against US-supported repressive regimes,
or setting up their own progressive governments. These acts of
self-determination didn’t coincide with the needs of the Ameri-
can power elite, and so the United States moved to crush those
governments and movements even though the Soviet Union was
playing virtually no role at all in these scenarios. (It is remarkable
the number of people who make fun of conspiracy theories but
who accepted without question the existence of an international
communist conspiracy.) Washington officials, of course, couldn’t
say that they were intervening to block economic or political
change, so they called it ‘fighting communism,’ fighting a com-
munist conspiracy, fighting for freedom and democracy.

I’m reminded of all this because of a recent article in the
Washington Post about El Salvador. It concerned two men who
had been on opposite sides in the civil war of 1980-92. One was
Jose Salgado, who had been a government soldier, and is now the
mayor of San Miguel, El Salvador’s second-largest city.

200

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

Salgado enthusiastically embraced the scorched-earth tactics of
his army bosses, the Post reports, even massacres of children, the
elderly, the sick - entire villages. It was all in the name of beating
back communism, Salgado says he remembers being told. But he’s
now haunted by doubts about what he saw, what he did, and even
why he fought. A US-backed war that was dehned at the time as
a battle against communism is now seen by former government
soldiers and former guerrillas as less a conflict about ideology and
more a battle over poverty and basic human rights. ‘We soldiers
were tricked,’ says Salgado. ‘They told us the threat was com-
munism. But I look back and realize those weren’t communists
out there that we were fighting - we were just poor country people
killing poor country people.’ Salgado says he once thought that the
guerrillas dreamed of communism, but now that those same men
are his colleagues in business and politics he is learning that they
wanted what he wanted: prosperity, a chance to move up in the
world, freedom from repression. All of which makes what they see
around them today even more heartbreaking and frustrating. For
all their sacrifices, El Salvador is still among the poorest countries
in the Western hemisphere - more than 40 percent of Salvadorans
live on less than $2 a day, according to the United Nations. The
country is still racked by violence, still scarred by corruption.
For some the question remains: was it all worth it? ‘We gave our
blood, we killed our friends and, in the end, things are still bad,’
says Salgado. ‘Look at all this poverty, and look how the wealth
is concentrated in just a few hands.’ The guerrillas Salgado once
fought live with the same doubts. Former guerrilla Benito Argueta
laments that the future didn’t turn out as he’d hoped. Even though
some factions of the coalition of guerrilla armies that fought in the
civil war were Marxist, he said, ideology had nothing to do with his
decision to take up arms and leave the farm where his father earned
only a few colones for backbreaking work. Nor did ideology play a
role in motivating his friends in the People’s Revolutionary Army.

THE COLD WAR

201

He remembers fighting ‘for a piece of land, for the chance that my
children might someday get to go to the university.’ 1

The Salvadoran government could never have waged the war
as destructively and for as long as it did without a massive influx
of military aid and training from Washington, the estimated value
of which was $6 billion. In consequence 75,000 Salvadorans
died; some twenty American military were killed or wounded
in combat; dissidents today still have to fear right-wing death
squads; there has been scarcely any significant social change in
El Salvador; a small class of the wealthy still own the country;
the poor remain poor as ever. But never mind: ‘Communism’ was
defeated and El Salvador remains part of ‘the Free World’ and a
loyal member of the empire, sending troops to Iraq. 2

This is not merely of historical interest. A civil war still rages
in Colombia. Government soldiers and large numbers of right-
wing paramilitary forces, with indispensable and endless military
support from the United States, battle ‘communism,’ the FARC
guerrillas, year after year, decade after decade. The casualties long
ago exceeded those of El Salvador. The irony is monumental, for
of those in Colombia labeled ‘communist,’ a handful of the older
ones may have fancied themselves as heirs to Che Guevara ten,
twenty or thirty years ago, but for a long time now the primary
motivation of these ‘left-wing’ paramilitary forces has been profits
from drugs and kidnappings, obtaining revenge for their com-
rades’ deaths, and staying alive and avoiding capture. Someday
the survivors on both sides may well be expressing sentiments
and regrets similar to the Salvadorans above, wondering what
the hell it was all really about, or at least wondering what the
United States’ obsessive interest in their country was. (For those
who may have forgotten, it should be noted that the Soviet Union
has not existed since 1991.)

And someday, as well, survivors on all sides of Washington’s
‘War on Terror’ may wonder who the real terrorists were.

202

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

The American myth industry

The Soviet Union signed a pact with the devil, Nazi Germany,
in 1939 for no reason other than the commies and the Nazis were
just two of a kind who wanted to carve up Poland together.

Without any justification, in 1940 the Soviet Union occupied
the three Baltic nations: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia.

Without any justification the Soviet Union occupied the rest
of Eastern Europe after the Second World War.

All this was done, apparently, because the Soviets were an
expansionist, brutal empire which liked to subjugate foreign
peoples for no particularly good reason - an ‘evil empire.’ The
Soviet Union sabotaged the optimistic plans of the 1945 Yalta
Agreement to establish a peaceful, fraternal postwar Europe.

These tales are all set in marble in American media, textbooks,
and folklore. However, I’d like to try to correct some of what
passes for the official record.

Much Western propaganda mileage has been squeezed out of
the Soviet-German treaty of 1939. This is made possible only by
entirely ignoring the fact that the Russians were forced into the
pact by the repeated refusal of the Western powers, particularly
the United States and Great Britain, to sign a mutual defense
treaty with Moscow in a stand against Hitler. 3 The Russians had
good reasons - their legendary international espionage network
being one of them - to believe that Hitler would eventually invade
them, which would be just fine with the Western powers, who,
at the notorious 1938 Munich conference, were hoping to nudge
Adolf eastward. (Thus it was Western ‘collusion’ with the Nazis,
not the oh-so-famous ‘appeasement’ of them; the latter of course
has been invoked over the years on numerous occasions to justify
American military action against the dangerous enemy of the
month.) The Soviets, consequently, felt obliged to sign the treaty
with Hitler to be able to stall for time while they built up their

THE COLD WAR

203

defenses. (Hitler, in the meantime, was focused more on his plans
to invade Poland.) Similarly, the Western ‘democracies’ refused
to come to the aid of the socialist-leaning Spanish government
under siege by the German, Italian, and Spanish fascists. Hitler
derived an important lesson from these happenings. He saw that
for the West the real enemy was not fascism; it was communism
and socialism. Stalin got the same message.

The Baltic states were part of the Russian empire from 1721
up to the Russian Revolution of 1917, in the midst of World War
I. When the war ended in November 1918, and the Germans
had been defeated, the victorious Allies (the US, Great Britain,
France et al.) permitted/encouraged the German forces to remain
in the Baltics for a full year to crush the spread of Bolshevism
there; this with ample military assistance from the Allies. In
each of the three republics, the Germans installed collaborators
in power who declared their independence from the Bolshevik
state, which by this time was so devastated by the world war, the
revolution, and the civil war (exacerbated and prolonged by Allied
intervention) that it had no choice but to accept the fait accompli.
The rest of the fledgling Soviet Union had to be saved. To win
at least some propaganda points from this unfortunate state of
affairs, the Russians announced that they were relinquishing
the Baltic republics ‘voluntarily’ in line with their principles of
anti-imperialism and self-determination. But it should not be
surprising that the Russians continued to regard the Baltics as a
rightful part of their nation or that they waited until they were
powerful enough to reclaim the territory.

Within the space of twenty-five years, Western powers invaded
Russia three times, during the periods of World War I, 1914-18;
the ‘intervention’ of 1918-20; and World War II, 1939-45, inflict-
ing some 40 million casualties in the two world wars alone. (The
Soviet Union lost considerably more people on its own land than
it did abroad. There are not too many great powers that can say

204

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

that.) To carry out these invasions, the West used Eastern Europe
as a highway. Should it be any cause for wonder that after World
War II the Soviets wanted to close this highway down? In almost
any other context, Americans would have no problem in seeing
this as an act of self-defense. But in the context of the Cold War
such thinking could not find a home in mainstream discourse.

For seventy years the United States used the sins - real and
(often) fabricated - of the Soviet Union as a justification for
US foreign policy. Thus the horrors carried out by the US in
Korea were justified because ‘we’re fighting communism.’ Thus
the horrors carried out by the US in Vietnam were justified
because ‘we’re fighting communism.’ And similarly the horrors
of Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Chile, Guatemala, Salvador, Ni-
caragua, and so on. (Now, of course, ‘we’re fighting terrorism,’
but it’s for the same capitalist, imperialist, world-domination
reasons.) It’s no wonder that many people with a social con-
science, who suffered over the horrors of US foreign policy,
became anti-anti-communists. 4

The Yalta Agreement of 1945, in planning for ‘the establish-
ment of order in Europe,’ affirmed ‘the right of all peoples to
choose the form of government under which they will live.’ We’ve
been told ever since that it was the evil commies who caused this
noble agreement to fall apart. But in fact it was the United States
and the United Kingdom that cynically violated this affirmation
before Stalin did - in Greece, and before the war in Europe even
ended! They did so by grossly interfering in the civil war, taking
the side of those who had supported the Nazis in the war, thus
enabling them to defeat those who had fought against the Nazis.
The latter, you see, had among its number some who could be
called (choke, gasp) ‘communists.’ 5

Anti-communism still holds a death grip on the American
psyche. Witness the screams of pain a few years ago - from Bush,
Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the media - over Amnesty International’s

THE COLD WAR

205

characterization of US torture sites as ‘the gulag of our times.’
Could anything be more infuriating and humiliating to an in-
veterate American cold warrior than for the United States to be
compared to Stalin’s Russia?

The Berlin Wall - another Cold War myth

As the fiftieth anniversary of the erection of the Berlin Wall took
place in 2011, all the Cold War cliches about the Free World
vs. Communist Tyranny were trotted out and the simple tale of
how the wall came to be were repeated: in 1961, the East Berlin
communists built a wall to keep their oppressed citizens from
escaping to West Berlin and freedom. Why? Because commies
don’t like people to be free, to learn the ‘truth.’ What other reason
could there have been?

First of all, before the wall went up thousands of East Germans
had been commuting to the West for jobs each day and then
returning to the East in the evening; many others went back and
forth for shopping or other reasons. So they were clearly not being
held in the East against their will. Why, then, was the wall built?
There were two major reasons.

(1) The West was bedeviling the East with a vigorous campaign
of recruiting East German professionals and skilled workers, who
had been educated at the expense of the Communist government.
This eventually led to a serious labor and production crisis in
the East. As one indication of this, the New York Times reported
in 1963: ‘West Berlin suffered economically from the wall by the
loss of about 60,000 skilled workmen who had commuted daily
from their homes in East Berlin to their places of work in West
Berlin.’ 6

In 1999, USA Today reported: ‘When the Berlin Wall crumbled
[1989], East Germans imagined a life of freedom where consumer
goods were abundant and hardships would fade. Ten years later, a

206

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

remarkable 51% say they were happier with communism.’ 7 Earlier
polls would likely have shown even more than 51 percent express-
ing such a sentiment, for in the ten years many of those who
remembered life in East Germany with some fondness had died;
although even ten years later, in 2009, the Washington Post could
report that ‘Westerners say they are fed up with the tendency
of their eastern counterparts to wax nostalgic about communist
times.’ 8

It was in the post-unification period that a new proverb was
born in the east: ‘Everything the Communists said about Com-
munism was a lie, but everything they said about capitalism
turned out to be the truth.’ It should also be noted that the
division of Germany into two states in 1949 - setting the stage
for forty years of Cold War hostility - was an American decision,
not a Soviet one. 9

(2) During the 1950s, American cold warriors in West Germany
instituted a crude campaign of sabotage and subversion against
East Germany designed to throw that country’s economic and
administrative machinery out of gear. The CIA and other US
intelligence and military services recruited, equipped, trained,
and financed German activist groups and individuals, of West
and East, to carry out actions which ran the spectrum from
juvenile delinquency to terrorism; anything to make life difficult
for the East German people and weaken their support for the
government; anything to make the commies look bad.

It was a remarkable undertaking. The United States and its
agents used explosives, arson, short-circuiting, and other methods
to damage power stations, shipyards, canals, docks, public build-
ings, gas stations, public transportation, bridges, and so on; they
derailed freight trains, seriously injuring workers; burned twelve
cars of a freight train and destroyed air pressure hoses of others;
used acids to damage vital factory machinery; put sand in the
turbine of a factory, bringing it to a standstill; set fire to a tile-

THE COLD WAR

207

producing factory; promoted work slowdowns in factories; killed
by poisoning 7,000 cows of a co-operative dairy; added soap to
powdered milk destined for East German schools; were in posses-
sion, when arrested, of a large quantity of the poison cantharidin ,
with which it was planned to produce poisoned cigarettes to kill
leading East Germans; set off stink bombs to disrupt political
meetings; attempted to disrupt the World Youth Festival in East
Berlin by sending out forged invitations, false promises of free
bed and board, false notices of cancellations, and so on; carried
out attacks on participants with explosives, firebombs, and tire-
puncturing equipment; forged and distributed large quantities of
food ration cards to cause confusion, shortages, and resentment;
sent out forged tax notices and other government directives and
documents to foster disorganization and inefficiency within in-
dustry and unions ... all this and much more. 10

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, of
Washington, DC, conservative cold warriors, in one of their
Cold War International History Project Working Papers (no.
58, p. 9) states: ‘The open border in Berlin exposed the GDR
[East Germany] to massive espionage and subversion and, as
the two documents in the appendices show, its closure gave the
Communist state greater security.’

Throughout the 1950s, the East Germans and the Soviet Union
repeatedly lodged complaints with the Soviets’ erstwhile allies
in the West and with the United Nations about specific sabotage
and espionage activities and called for the closure of the offices
in West Germany they claimed were responsible, and for which
they provided names and addresses. Their complaints fell on deaf
ears. Inevitably, the East Germans began to tighten up entry into
the country from the West, leading eventually to the infamous
Wall. However, even after the wall was built there was regular,
albeit limited, legal emigration from east to west. In 1984, for
example, East Germany allowed 40,000 people to leave. In 1985,

208

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

East German newspapers claimed that more than 20,000 former
citizens who had settled in the West wanted to return home after
becoming disillusioned with the capitalist system. The West
German government said that 14,300 East Germans had gone
back over the previous ten years. 11

The American media as the Berlin Wall

In December 1975, while East Timor, which lies at the eastern
end of the Indonesian archipelago, was undergoing a process of
decolonization from Portugal, a struggle for power took place. A
movement of the left, Fretilin, prevailed and then declared East
Timor’s independence from Portugal. Nine days later, Indonesia
invaded East Timor. The invasion was launched the day after US
President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
had left Indonesia after giving President Suharto permission to
use American arms, which, under US law, could not be used for
aggression. But Indonesia was Washington’s most valuable ally
in Southeast Asia and, in any event, the United States was not
inclined to look kindly on any government of the left.

Indonesia soon achieved complete control over East Timor,
with the help of the American arms and other military aid, as well
as diplomatic support at the UN. Amnesty International estimated
that by 1989 Indonesian troops had killed 200,000 people out of
a population of between 600,000 and 700,000, a death rate which
is probably one of the highest in the entire history of wars. 12

Is it not remarkable that in the numerous articles in the Ameri-
can daily press following President Ford’s death on December 26,
2006 there was not a single mention of his role in the East Timor
massacre? A search of the extensive Lexis-Nexis and other media
databases finds mention of this only in a few letters to the editor
from readers; not a word even in the reports of any of the news
agencies, like the Associated Press, which generally shy away

THE COLD WAR

209

from controversy less than the newspapers they serve; nor a single
mention in the mainstream broadcast news programs.

Imagine if following the death of Augusto Pinochet two weeks
earlier the media had made no mention of his overthrow of the
Allende government in Chile, or the mass murder and torture that
followed. Ironically, articles about Ford also failed to mention his
remark a year after Pinochet’s coup. President Ford declared that
what the United States had done in Chile was ‘in the best interest
of the people in Chile and certainly in our own best interest.’ 13

During the Cold War, the American government and media
never missed an opportunity to point out the news events em-
barrassing to the Soviet Union which were not reported in the
communist media.

Lincoln Gordon: Harvard boy wonder
and his crime against humanity

Lincoln Gordon died in December 2009 at the age of 96. He
had graduated summa cum laude from Harvard at the age of 19,
received a doctorate from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, published
his first book at 22, with dozens more to follow on government,
economics, and foreign policy in Europe and Latin America. He
joined the Harvard faculty at 23. Dr Gordon was an executive on
the War Production Board during World War II, a top administra-
tor of Marshall Plan programs in postwar Europe, ambassador to
Brazil and held other high positions at the State Department and
the White House, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars, economist at the Brookings Institution, presi-
dent of Johns Hopkins University. President Lyndon B. Johnson
praised Gordon’s diplomatic service as ‘a rare combination of
experience, idealism, and practical judgment.’

You get the picture? Boy wonder, intellectual shining light,
distinguished leader of men, outstanding American patriot.

210

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

Abraham Lincoln Gordon was also Washington’s on-site, and
very active, director in Brazil of the military coup in 1964 which
overthrew the moderately leftist government of Joao Goulart and
condemned the people of Brazil to more than twenty years of
an unspeakably brutal dictatorship. Human-rights campaigners
have long maintained that Brazil’s military regime originated the
idea of the desaparecidos , ‘the disappeared,’ and exported torture
methods across Latin America. In 2007, the Brazilian government
published a 500-page book, The Right to Memory and the Truth ,
which outlines the systematic torture, rape, and disappearance
of nearly 500 left-wing activists, and includes photos of corpses
and torture victims.

In a cable to Washington after the coup, Gordon stated - in
a remark that might have had difficulty getting past the lips of
even John Foster Dulles - that without the coup there could have
been a ‘total loss to the West of all South American Republics.’ (It
was actually the beginning of a series of fascistic anti-communist
coups that trapped the southern half of South America in a
decades-long nightmare, culminating in ‘Operation Condor’, in
which the various dictatorships, aided by the CIA, cooperated
in hunting down and killing leftists.)

Gordon later testified at a congressional hearing. While denying
completely any connection to the coup in Brazil, he stated that
the coup was ‘the single most decisive victory of freedom in the
mid-twentieth century.’

Consider the transcript of a phone conversation between Presi-
dent Johnson and Thomas Mann, assistant secretary of state for
inter-American affairs, of April 3, 1964, two days after the coup:

mann: I hope you’re as happy about Brazil as I am.

LBJ : I am.

mann: I think that’s the most important thing that’s happened in

the hemisphere in three years.

THE COLD WAR

211

LBJ : I hope they give us some credit instead of hell . 14

So the next time you’re faced with a boy wonder from Harvard,
try to keep your adulation in check no matter what office the
man attains, even - oh, just choosing a position at random
- the presidency of the United States. Keep your eyes focused
not so much on these ‘liberal,’ ‘best and brightest’ who come
and go, but on US foreign policy, which remains the same
decade after decade. There are dozens of Brazils and Lincoln
Gordons in America’s past, in its present, in its future. They’re
the diplomatic equivalent of the guys who ran Enron, AIG, and
Goldman Sachs.

Of course, not all of our foreign policy officials are like that.
Some are worse. The same people who read Dante and went to
Yale and were educated in civic virtue recruited Nazis, manipu-
lated the outcome of democratic elections, gave LSD to unwitting
subjects, opened the mail of thousands of American citizens,
overthrew governments, supported dictatorships, plotted assas-
sinations, and engineered the Bay of Pigs disaster. ‘In the name
of what?’ asked one critic. ‘Not civic virtue, but empire .’ 15

Remember the words of convicted spy Alger Hiss: prison was
‘a good corrective to three years at Harvard.’

Anti-communism 101: hijacking history

We like to think of death as the time for truth. No matter how
much the deceased may have lived a lie, when he goes to meet
his presumed maker the real, sordid facts of his life will out.
Or at least they should; the obituary being the final chance to
set the record straight. But obituaries of those who played an
important role in American foreign policy seldom perform this
function; the sanitized version surrounding foreign policy and
the deceased individual’s role therein usually find life in his

212

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

obituary and thence into State of Texas-approved American
history textbooks.

I commented above on the death of Lincoln Gordon and the
egregious absence in his obituaries of his crime against human-
ity in Brazil. Not long afterwards came the death of Phillips
Talbot, who was appointed by President Kennedy to be assistant
secretary of state for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs, and
later became ambassador to Greece. In 1967 the Greek military
and intelligence service, both closely tied to the CIA, overthrew
another progressive government, that of George Papandreou and
his son, cabinet minister Andreas Papandreou. For the next seven
years the Greek people suffered utterly grievous suppression and
torture. Talbot’s obituary states:

Dr. Talbot was asleep in his bed while tanks rumbled through
the streets of Athens and was completely surprised when Armed
Forces radio announced at 6:10 a.m. that the military had taken
control of the country. Dr. Talbot was adamant that the United
States was impartial throughout the transition. ‘You may be
assured that there has been no American involvement in or, in fact,
prior knowledge of the climactic events that those residing in this
country have lived through in the past couple of years,’ Dr. Talbot
told the New York Times in 1969 shortly before he returned home. 16

Andreas Papandreou was arrested at the time of the coup
and held in prison for eight months. Shortly after his release,
he and his wife Margaret visited Ambassador Talbot in Athens.
Papandreou later related the following:

I asked Talbot whether America could have intervened the night of
the coup, to prevent the death of democracy in Greece. He denied
that they could have done anything about it. Then Margaret asked
a critical question: What if the coup had been a Communist or a
Leftist coup? Talbot answered without hesitation. Then, of course,
they would have intervened, and they would have crushed the
coup. 17

THE COLD WAR

213

In November 1999, during a visit to Greece, President Bill
Clinton was moved to declare:

When the junta took over in 1967 here the United States allowed its
interests in prosecuting the cold war to prevail over its interest - I
should say its obligation - to support democracy, which was, after
all, the cause for which we fought the cold war. It is important that
we acknowledge that. 18

Clinton’s surprising admission prompted the retired Phillips
Talbot to write to the New York Times:

With all due respect to President Clinton, he is wrong to imply
that the United States supported the Greek coup in 1967. The coup
was the product of Greek political rivalries and was contrary to
American interests in every respect. ... Some Greeks have asserted
that the United States could have restored a civilian government.

In fact, we had neither the right nor the means to overturn the
junta, bad as it was. 19

Or, as Bart Simpson would put it: ‘I didn’t do it, no one saw me
do it, you can’t prove anything!’

After reading Talbot’s letter in the New Yo?'k Times in 1999 I
wrote to him at his New York address reminding him of what
Andreas Papandreou had reported on this very subject. I received
no reply.

The cases of Brazil and Greece were, of course, just two of
many leftist governments overthrown, as well as revolutionary
movements suppressed, by the United States during the Cold
War on the grounds that America had a moral right and obliga-
tion to defeat the evil of Soviet communism that was - we were
told - instigating these forces. It was largely a myth. Bolshevism
and Western liberalism were united in their opposition to most
popular revolution. Russia was a country with a revolutionary
past, not a revolutionary present. Even in Cuba, the Soviets were
always a little embarrassed by the Castro-Guevara radical fervor.
Stalin would have had such men imprisoned.

214

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

A cold warrior’s nightmare

Jack Kubisch died on May 7, 2007 in North Carolina. You prob-
ably have never heard of him. He was a State Department foreign
service officer who served in Mexico, France, and Brazil, and
as ambassador to Greece. At the time of the September 11, 1973
military coup in Chile which overthrew the democratically elected
socialist government of Salvador Allende, he was assistant secre-
tary of state for inter-American affairs.

In the wake of the coup, Kubisch was hard-pressed to counter
charges that the United States had been involved. He insisted:

It was not in our interest to have the military take over in Chile.

It would have been better had Allende served his entire term,
taking the nation and the Chilean people into complete and total
ruin. Only then would the full discrediting of socialism have taken
place. Only then would people have gotten the message that social-
ism doesn’t work. What has happened has confused this lesson. 20

Read that again. It’s as concise and as clear a description of
the ideological underpinnings of United States foreign policy as
you’re ever going to find publicly admitted to by a high-ranking
American official. Though based on a falsehood made up for
the occasion - that Allende’s polices were leading Chile to ruin,
which was not the case at all - Kubisch’s words articulate a
basic goal of US foreign policy: to prevent the rise of any society
that might serve as a successful example of an alternative to the
capitalist model. Many underdeveloped countries were punished
terribly during the Cold War by Washington for having such an
aspiration; Cuba still is; better that such societies suffer ‘complete
and total ruin’ than achieve such a goal.

Washington knows no heresy in the Third World but genuine
independence. In the case of Salvador Allende, independence
came clothed in an especially provocative costume - a Marxist
constitutionally elected who continued to honor the constitution.

THE COLD WAR

215

This would not do. It shook the very foundation stones upon
which the anti-communist tower was built: the doctrine, painstak-
ingly cultivated for decades, that ‘communists’ can take power
only through force and deception, that they can retain that power
only through terrorizing and brainwashing the population. For
Washington ideologues there could be only one thing worse than
a Marxist in power - an elected Marxist in power.

Dr Strangelove

(July 4, 2008)

There have been numerous books published on the 1962 Cuban
Missile Crisis. I have not read one of them. There’s another one
just out: One Minute to Midnight , by Washington Post writer
Michael Dobbs. I will not be reading it. The reason authors
keep writing these books and publishers keep publishing them
is obvious: how close the world came to a nuclear war between
the United States and the Soviet Union! Arthur Schlesinger, Jr,
historian and adviser to President Kennedy, termed it ‘the most
dangerous moment in human history.’ 21 But I’ve never believed
that. Such a fear is based on the belief that either or both of the
countries was ready and willing to unleash their nuclear weapons
against the other. However, this was never in the cards because
of MAD - mutually assured destruction. By 1962, the nuclear
arsenals of the United States and the Soviet Union had grown
so large and sophisticated that neither superpower could entirely
destroy the other’s retaliatory force by launching a missile first,
even with a surprise attack. Retaliation was certain, or certain
enough. Starting a nuclear war was committing suicide. If the
Japanese had had nuclear bombs, Hiroshima and Nagasaki would
not have been destroyed.

Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev was only looking for equal-
ity. The United States had missiles and bomber bases already in

216

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

place in Turkey and other missiles in Western Europe pointed
toward the Soviet Union. Khrushchev later wrote:

The Americans had surrounded our country with military bases
and threatened us with nuclear weapons, and now they would
learn just what it feels like to have enemy missiles pointing at you;
we’d be doing nothing more than giving them a little of their own
medicine. ... After all, the United States had no moral or legal
quarrel with us. We hadn’t given the Cubans anything more than
the Americans were giving to their allies. We had the same rights
and opportunities as the Americans. Our conduct in the inter-
national arena was governed by the same rules and limits as the
Americans. 22

Virtually every president from Truman on has been exhorted
by one Dr Strangelove or another, military or civilian, to use the
Bomb when things were going badly, such as in Korea or Vietnam
or Cuba, or to use it against the Soviets directly, unprovoked,
to once and for all get rid of those commie bastards who were
causing so much trouble in so many countries. And not one presi-
dent gave in to this pressure. They would have been MAD to do
so. Which is why all the scary talk of recent years about Saddam
Hussein and Iran and all their alleged and potential weapons of
mass destruction was just that - scary talk. Hussein was not, and
the Iranians are not, MAD. The only modern-day leaders I would
not make this assumption about are Osama bin Laden and Dick
Cheney. The latter is a genuine Dr Strangelove.

The Cold War was a marvelous era for Armageddon humor.
Here is US General Thomas Power speaking in December i960
about things like nuclear war and a first strike by the United
States: ‘The whole idea is to kill the bastards! At the end of the
war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!’ The
response from one of those present was: ‘Well, you’d better make
sure that they’re a man and a woman.’ 23

THE COLD WAR

217

Saving Japan from pacifism

Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and
order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign
right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of
settling international disputes ... In order to accomplish the aim of
the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other
war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency
of the state will not be recognized. (Article 9 of the Japanese
Constitution, 1947, cherished by a majority of the Japanese people)

In the triumphalism of the end of the Second World War, the
American occupation of Japan, in the person of General Douglas
MacArthur, played a major role in the creation of the 1947 con-
stitution. But after the communists came to power in China in
1949, the United States opted for a strong Japan safely ensconced
in the anti- communist camp. It was all downhill after that. . . step
by step... MacArthur himself ordered the creation of a ‘national
police reserve,’ which became the embryo of the future Japanese
military... Visiting Tokyo in 1956, US Secretary of State John
Foster Dulles told Japanese officials: ‘In the past, Japan had
demonstrated her superiority over the Russians and over China. It
was time for Japan to think again of being and acting like a Great
Power’ 24 . . .Various US-Japanese security and defense cooperation
treaties were signed, which, for example, called on Japan to inte-
grate its military technology with that of the US and NATO. . . the
US supplying new sophisticated military aircraft and destroyers. . .
All manner ofjapanese logistical assistance was given to the US in
its frequent military operations in Asia... Repeated US pressure
on Japan to increase its military budget and the size of its armed
forces. . . More than a hundred US military bases were established
in Japan, protected by Japanese armed forces... US-Japanese
joint military exercises and joint research on a missile defense
system... In 2001 the US ambassador to Japan said: ‘I think the
reality of circumstances in the world is going to suggest to the

2l8

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

Japanese that they reinterpret or redefine Article g’ 25 . . . Under
pressure from Washington, Japan sent several naval vessels to the
Indian Ocean to refuel US and British warships as part of the
Afghanistan campaign in 2002, then sent non-combat forces to
Iraq to assist the American war. . . In 2004 US Secretary of State
Colin Powell observed: ‘If Japan is going to play a full role on
the world stage and become a full active participating member
of the Security Council, and have the kind of obligations that it
would pick up as a member of the Security Council, Article Nine
would have to be examined in that light.’ 26

One outcome or symptom of all this can perhaps be seen in
the case of Kimiko Nezu, a 54-year-old Japanese teacher, who was
punished by being transferred from school to school, by suspen-
sions, salary cuts, and threats of dismissal because of her refusal
to stand during the playing of the national anthem, a World War
II song chosen in 1999. She opposed the song because it was the
same one sung as the Imperial Army set forth from Japan calling
for an ‘eternal reign’ of the emperor. At graduation ceremonies in
2004, 198 teachers refused to stand for the song. After a series of
fines and disciplinary actions, Nezu and nine other teachers were
the only protesters the following year. Nezu was then allowed to
teach only when another teacher was present. 27

The Germans, too, had to be taught how to kill

(March 2007)

While weaning Japan away from its post-World War II pacifist
constitution and foreign policy and setting it back on the righteous
path to again being a military power, acting in coordination
with US foreign policy needs, the United States of course had
the same goal in mind for its other major World War II foe. But
recent circumstances indicate that Washington may be losing
patience with the rate of Germany’s submission to the empire’s

THE COLD WAR

219

embrace. Germany declined to send troops to Iraq and sent only
non-combat forces to Afghanistan, not quite good enough for the
Pentagon war lovers and their NATO allies. Germany’s leading
news magazine, Der Spiegel , reported the following:

At a meeting in Washington, Bush administration officials, speak-
ing in the context of Afghanistan, berated Karsten Voigt, German
government representative for German-American relations: ‘You
concentrate on rebuilding and peacekeeping, but the unpleasant
things you leave to us. ... The Germans have to learn to kill.’

A German officer at NATO headquarters was told by a British
officer: ‘Every weekend we send home two metal coffins, while
you Germans distribute crayons and woollen blankets.’ A NATO
colleague from Canada remarked that it was about time that ‘the
Germans left their sleeping quarters and learned how to kill the
Taliban.’ Bruce George, British MP and head of the House of
Commons Defence Committee, observed: ‘some drink tea and
beer and others risk their lives.’ And in Quebec, a Canadian offi-
cial told a German official: ‘We have the dead, you drink beer.’ 28

Yet, in many other contexts since the end of the war the
Germans have been unable to disassociate themselves from the
image of Nazi murderers and monsters.

Will there come the day when the Taliban and Iraqi insurgents
will be mocked by ‘the Free World’ for living in peace?

Man shall never fly

(January 12, 2007)

The Cold War is still with us. Because the ideological conflict
that was the basis for it has not gone away. Because it can’t go
away. As long as capitalism exists, as long as it puts profit before
people, as it must, as long as it puts profit before the environment,
as it must, those on the receiving end of its sharp pointed stick
must look for a better way.

220

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

Thus it is that when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez an-
nounced plans to nationalize telephone and electric utility com-
panies to accelerate his ‘socialist revolution,’ the spokesperson
for Capitalism Central, White House press secretary Tony Snow,
was quick to the attack: ‘Nationalization has a long and inglorious
history of failure around the world,’ Snow declared. ‘We support the
Venezuelan people and think this is an unhappy day for them .’ 29

Snow presumably buys into the belief that capitalism defeated
socialism in the Cold War. A victory for a superior idea. The boys
of Capital chortle into their martinis about the death of socialism.
The word has been banned from polite conversation. And they
hope that no one will notice that every socialist experiment of any
significance in the past century has been corrupted, subverted,
perverted, or destabilized... or crushed, overthrown, bombed,
or invaded... or otherwise had life made impossible for it, by the
United States. Not one socialist government or movement - from
the Russian Revolution to Cuba, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua
and the FMLN in Salvador, from Communist China to Grenada,
Chile and Vietnam - not one was permitted to rise or fall solely on
its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard
against the all-powerful enemy abroad and freely and fully relax
control at home. Even many plain old social democracies - such as
in Guatemala, Iran, British Guiana, Serbia, and Haiti - which were
not in love with capitalism and were looking for another path, even
those too were made to bite the dust by Uncle Sam.

It’s as if the Wright brothers’ first experiments with flying
machines all failed because the automobile interests sabotaged
each test flight. And the good and God-fearing folk of America
looked upon this, took notice of the consequences, nodded
their collective heads wisely, and intoned solemnly: Man shall
never fly.

Tony Snow would have us believe that the government is
no match for the private sector in efficiently getting large and

THE COLD WAR

221

important things done. But is that really true? Let’s clear our
minds for a moment, push our upbringing to one side, and re-
member that the American government has landed men on the
moon, created great dams, marvelous national parks, an interstate
highway system for a huge land, the peace corps, built up an
incredible military machine (ignoring for the moment what it’s
used for), social security, Medicare, insurance for bank deposits,
protection of pension funds against corporate misuse, the Envi-
ronmental Protection Agency, the National Institutes of Health,
the Smithsonian, the G.I. Bill, and much, much more. In short,
the government has been quite good at doing what it wanted to
do, or what labor and other movements have made it do, like es-
tablishing worker health and safety standards and requiring food
manufacturers to list detailed information about ingredients.

When George W. Bush took office one of his chief goals was
to examine whether jobs done by federal employees could be
performed more efficiently by private contractors. Bush called it
his top management priority. By the end of 2005, around 50,000
government jobs had been studied. And federal workers had won
the job competitions more than 80 percent of the time. 30

The American people have to be reminded of what they’ve
instinctively learned but tend to forget when faced with statements
like that of Tony Snow: that they don’t want more government,
or less government; they don’t want big government, or small
government; they simply want government on their side.

And by the way, Tony, the great majority of the population in
the last years of the Soviet Union had a much better quality of life,
including a longer life, under their ‘failed nationalized’ economy,
than they have had under unbridled capitalism.

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living
in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a
legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
(Frederic Bastiat, The Law , 1850)

222

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

This is your mind on anti-communism

(April 22, 2006)

Earlier this month, in Miami-Dade county, Florida (where else?)
it was reported that the parent of a schoolchild asked the school
board to ban a book called Vamos a Cuba (‘Let’s go to Cuba’), a
travel book that has smiling kids on the cover and inside depicts
happy scenes from a festival held in Cuba. ‘As a former political
prisoner from Cuba, I find the material to be untruthful,’ Juan
Amador, wrote to the school board. ‘It portrays a life in Cuba that
does not exist. I believe it aims to create an illusion and distort
reality.’ Mr. Amador is presumably claiming that no one in Cuba
is ever happy or even smiles. 31

Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi declared during his election
campaign that communists in Mao’s China boiled babies to make
fertilizer. 32 He defended his remark by citing The Black Book
of Communism , a ‘history’ of communism published in 1997, a
book that is to the study of communism what ‘The Protocols
of the Elders of Zion’ is to Judaism, or what the collected state-
ments of George W. Bush are to understanding why we are
fighting in Iraq. Berlusconi’s remark may actually be regarded
as progress in the wonderful world of anti-communism, for
following the Russian Revolution of 1917 it was widely and long
proclaimed in the Western world that the Bolsheviks killed and
ate babies (as the early pagans believed the Christians guilty of
devouring their children; the same was believed of Jews in the
Middle Ages).

The Victims of Communism Memorial

This is a memorial in Washington, DC installed in 2007 near the
US Capitol with an associated Global Museum on Communism
on the Internet. Both are monuments to radical one-sidedness. It

THE COLD WAR

223

may be difficult for young people today to believe, but the lies fed
to the American people and the world about the Cold War, the
Soviet Union, and communism (or ‘communism’) were even more
routine and flagrant than the lies of recent years concerning Iraq,
Afghanistan, and terrorism (or ‘terrorism’). The most extreme
and basic Cold War lie being the existence of something called
the ‘International Communist Conspiracy,’ seeking to take over
the world and subvert everything decent and holy.

The ideological hijacking of history is never a pretty sight.
Who, it must be asked, will build the Victims of Anti-Commu-
nism Memorial and Museum? Who will document and remember
the abominable death, destruction, torture, violation of human
rights, and killing of hope under the banner of fighting ‘com-
munism’ that we know under various names: Vietnam, Laos,
Chile, Korea, Guatemala, El Salvador, Cambodia, Indonesia,
Iran, Brazil, Greece, Argentina, Nicaragua, Haiti, Afghanistan,
Iraq, and numerous others.

Why does NATO still exist?

NATO has been taking ambitious steps for years: bombing Yu-
goslavia in 1999; patrolling the Balkans like a governor general;
providing security for the 2004 Olympics in Greece; taking formal
charge of the war in Afghanistan; training Iraqi security forces;
putting itself into the war on terror; waging a vicious seven-month
war against Libya in 2011; seeking to do the same in Syria in 2012
with or without UN Security Council sanction; expanding its
membership, which now stands at twenty-six nations plus twenty
others brought into the NATO fold under the reassuring name
of Partnership for Peace...

Time out. Where does NATO get all this authority? What
body of citizens has ever voted for them to do any of this? Why,
indeed, does NATO even exist?

224

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

We were told during the Cold War that NATO was needed
to protect Western Europe from a Soviet invasion. As some may
have noticed, the Soviet Union no longer exists. (It has been sug-
gested, plausibly, that NATO was created originally to suppress
the left in Italy or France if the Communist Party came to power
through an election.)

We have also been told that NATO was there to counter the
Warsaw Pact. The Warsaw Pact folded its tent in 1991, calling
upon NATO to do the same.

If NATO hadn’t begun to intervene outside of Europe it would
have highlighted its uselessness and lack of mission. ‘Out of area
or out of business’ it was said.

If NATO had never existed, what argument could be given
today in favor of creating such an institution? Other than being
a very useful handmaiden of US foreign policy and providing
American arms manufacturers with billions of dollars of guaran-
teed sales to the ever-increasing membership.

The Rosenbergs as heroes

John Gerassi, professor of political science at Queens College in
New York City, wrote a letter to the New York Times :

To the Editor,

In his ‘A Spy Confesses’ (Week in Review, September 21, 2008),
Sam Roberts claims that folks ‘fiercely loyal to the far left believed
that the Rosenbergs were not guilty...’ I am and have always been,
since my stint as a correspondent and editor in Latin America for
Time and Newsweek , a ‘far leftist,’ and I have never claimed the
Rosenbergs were not guilty. Nor have any of my ‘far leftist’ friends.
What we always said, and what I repeat to my students every
semester, is that ‘if they were guilty, they are this planet’s great
heroes.’ My explanation is quite simple: The US had a first-strike
policy, the USSR did not (until Gorbachev). In 1952, the US
military, and various intelligence services, calculated that a first

THE COLD WAR

225

strike on all Soviet silos would wipe out all but 6 percent of Rus-
sian atomic missiles (and, we now know, create enough radiation
to kill us all) . But those 6 percent would automatically be fired at
US cities. The military then calculated what would happen if one
made a direct hit on Denver (why they chose Denver and not New
York or Washington was never explained). Their finding: 200,000
would die immediately, two million within a month. They con-
cluded that it was not worth it. In other words, I tell my students,
you were born and I am alive because the USSR had a deterrent
against our ‘preventive’ attack, not the other way around. And if it
is true that the Rosenbergs helped the Soviets get that deterrent,
they end up among the planet’s saviors.

John Gerassi

It will not come as a great surprise to learn that the New York Times

did not allow such thoughts to appear in its exalted pages.

THE 1960S

Carl Oglesby and Students for a Democratic Society

The president of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), 1965-
66, died on September 13, 2011, aged 76 . 1 remember Oglesby best
for his speech during the March on Washington, on November
27, 1965, a speech passionately received by the tens of thousands
crowding the National Mall:

The original commitment in Vietnam was made by President
Truman, a mainstream liberal. It was seconded by President Eisen-
hower, a moderate liberal. It was intensified by the late President
Kennedy, a flaming liberal. Think of the men who now engineer
that war - those who study the maps, give the commands, push
the buttons, and tally the dead: Bundy, McNamara, Rusk, Lodge,
Goldberg, the President [Johnson] himself. They are not moral
monsters. They are all honorable men. They are all liberals.

He insisted that America’s founding fathers would have been on
his side. ‘Our dead revolutionaries would soon wonder why their
country was fighting against what appeared to be a revolution.’
He challenged those who called him anti-American: ‘I say, don’t
blame me for that! Blame those who mouthed my liberal values
and broke my American heart.’

We are dealing now with a colossus that does not want to be
changed. It will not change itself. It will not cooperate with those

THE 1960S

227

who want to change it. Those allies of ours in the government
- are they really our allies? If they are, then they don’t need
advice, they need constituencies; they don’t need study groups,
they need a movement. And if they are not [our allies] , then all the
more reason for building that movement with the most relentless
conviction.

It saddens me to think that virtually nothing has changed for
the better in US foreign policy since Carl Oglesby spoke on the
Mall that day. America’s wars are ongoing, perpetual, eternal.
And the current warmonger in the White House is regarded by
many as a liberal, for whatever that’s worth.

‘We took space back quickly, expensively, with total panic and
close to maximum brutality,’ war correspondent Michael Herr
recalled about the US military in Vietnam. ‘Our machine was
devastating. And versatile. It could do everything but stop.’

The March on the Pentagon, 1967

October 21, 1967, the March on the Pentagon, surely one of
the most extraordinary and imposing acts of protest and civil
disobedience in history - the government hunkered down in
its trenches in the face of an audacious assault upon its seat of
power by its own citizens; a demonstration much bigger than
the Bonus Marchers of 1932 (those Depression-stricken World
War I veterans demanding payment on their government bonus
certificates now , not in some pie-in-the-sky future - the people
peaceably assembled to petition the government for a redress of
grievances, violently and humiliatingly squashed by federal troops
under the command of a general named MacArthur, and his aide
named Eisenhower, and their officer named Patton.)

After a stirring concert at the Reflecting Pool by Phil Ochs, sur-
rounded by 150,000 of his closest friends, most of the protestors
marched over the Memorial Bridge to the war factory. Never to be

228

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

forgotten: the roof of the Pentagon when the colossus first came
into view and we marched closer and closer - soldiers standing
guard, spaced across the roof from one side to the other, weapons
at the ready, motionless, looking down upon us from on high with
all the majesty of stone warriors or gods atop a classical Greek
temple. For the first time that day I wondered - not without
excitement - what I was letting myself in for.

This was wholly unlike my Erst protest at the Pentagon. This
was not a group of Quaker pacifists sworn to non-violence, who
could bring out the least macho side of even professional mili-
tary men, and who would be received cordially in the Pentagon
cafeteria. Today, we were as welcome and as safe as narcs at a
biker rally. Our numbers included many that the boys at the
Pentagon must have been itching to get their hands on, like those
in the Committee to Aid the National Liberation Front, with their
Vietcong flags, and SDS, and other ‘anti-imperialist’ groups, who
became involved in some of the earliest confrontations that day.

In sharp contrast to the likes of these were the illuminati like
Norman Mailer, Marcus Raskin, Noam Chomsky, Robert Lowell,
Dwight McDonald - men in dark suits, white shirts and ties as if
to ward off evil spirits with the cross of respectability.

In the vast parking lot to which we were confined, open hostil-
ity was kept in check at first, but it was clear that the peace was
only an inch deep. Repeated draft-card burnings took place - a
veritable performance, with flaming cards held high and flaunted
square in the irises of the soldiers, whose faces were masked in
studied indifference. Although this augured conflict of unpredict-
able dimensions, I found it exhilarating to see all those young
people acting in such a principled and fearless way. I was sorry
that I was too old to have a card to burn.

Scattered pockets of mild confrontation broke out, soon un-
folding into more widespread and serious clashes. At one spot a
Vietnam teach-in for the troops was broken up by Military Police

THE 1960S

229

(MP) with clubs. Later, 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers,
veterans of Vietnam, entered the scene, bayonets bxed, face to face
at last with these people they had been hearing about so much,
the privileged little sons of bitches whose incessant crying about
international law and morality and God-knows-what-else gave aid
and comfort to the enemy, the cowardly little snot-nosed draft-
dodgers who wallowed in sex and dope while the GIs wallowed
in mud and death (and dope as well).

The paratroopers proceeded to kick ass - after ’Nam this was
a church picnic - and many bruised and battered demonstrators
were carried away to waiting prison busses, helping to swell the
day’s total arrestees to near 700. The protestors, whose only
defense was to lock arms, appealed to the soldiers to back off, to
join them, to just act human, shouting through a bull horn: ‘The
soldiers are not our enemy, the decision-makers are.’ Though this
was a sincere declaration, its failure to sway their attackers gave
way to angry, impotent curses of ‘bastards’ and ‘motherfuckers.’

I had no big argument with the idea that the soldiers’ bosses
were the real enemy, but I had real difficulty with the expressions
of ‘love’ for the GIs that some silly hippie types allowed to pass
their lips. The soldiers, after all, had made decisions, just as
others of their generation had opted for draft evasion or Canada.
These soldiers, in particular, were fresh from the killing fields.
The idea of ‘individual responsibility’ is not just a conservative
buzzword.

Several eyewitnesses told the Washington Free Press that in
other areas of the ‘battlefield’ they saw as many as three soldiers
drop their weapons and helmets and join the crowd, and that at
least one of them was seized and dragged into the Pentagon by
MPs soon afterward. Later attempts to obtain information about
these soldiers from the Pentagon were met with denials.

IDEOLOGY AND SOCIETY

What a mad raving dinosaur am I!

Leaders of both the Republican and Democratic Parties believe,
or pretend to believe, that the American people have resolutely
moved to the center, abandoning the ‘extremes’ of left and right.
But is that really so? I maintain that most Americans are clearly
liberal, and many even further left. I think that this would be
revealed if the public was asked questions along the following
lines.

Would you like to have a government-run healthcare system
which covered all residents for all ailments at no charge at all?

Would you like to have a government-financed education
system where all schooling, including medical school and law
school, would be free?

Do you think that when corporations are faced with a choice
between optimizing their revenue and doing what’s best for the
environment, public health, or public safety that they should
almost always choose in favor of optimizing their revenue, as
they do now?

Do you think that abortion is a question best left up to a woman
and her doctor?

Do you think that the United States should officially be a totally
secular nation or one officially based on religious beliefs?

IDEOLOGY AND SOCIETY

231

Do you think that large corporations and their political action
committees exercise too much political power?

Do you think that corporate executive salaries are highly
excessive?

Do you think that the tax cuts for the super-rich instituted by
the Bush administration should be cancelled and their taxes thus
increased?

Do you think that the minimum wage should be increased to
what is called a ‘living wage,’ which would be at least $10 per
hour?

Do you think that the government should take all measures
necessary to guarantee that corporations have retirement plans for
all workers and that the retirement funds are safeguarded?

Do you think that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was a
mistake?

Do you think that the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan
was a mistake?

Do you think that United States support of Israel is
excessive?

Do you approve of the treatment of people captured by the
United States as part of its so-called War on Terror - the virtu-
ally complete loss of legal and human rights, and subjection to
torture?

For those readers who think that I’m presuming too much
about Americans’ disenchantment with their economic system, I
suggest they have a look at my essay ‘The United States invades,
bombs, and kills for it, but do Americans really believe in free
enterprise?’ 1

And for those readers who wonder where all the money would
come from to pay for the education, medical care, and so forth,
that’s the easy part - The Defense Department would have to do
what peace groups often have to do: hold bake sales.

To those who like to tell themselves and others that they don’t

232

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

have any particular ideology, I say this: if you have thoughts
about why the world is the way it is, why society is the way it is,
why people are the way they are, what a better way would look
like, and if your thoughts are fairly well organized, then that’s
your ideology, even if it’s not wholly conscious as such.

Humans mourning humans

On April 16, 2007, on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Insti-
tute, a lone student gunman killed thirty-two people. Because of
the university’s location and the fact that several of the victims
came from the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, where I
live, the Washington Post gave book-length coverage to the event.
I found myself choking up, at times with tears, repeatedly, each
day as I read the stories of the stolen young lives.

Two days after the massacre, the Supreme Court issued a
ruling making certain abortions illegal. This led to statements
from celebrating anti-abortion activists about how the life of
‘unborn children’ would be saved, and how the fetus is fully a
human being deserving of as much care and respect and legal
protection as any other human being. But does anyone know
cases of parents grieving over an aborted fetus the way the media
showed parents and friends grieving over the slain Virginia Tech
students? Of course not. If for no other reason than the fact that
parents choose to have an abortion.

Does anyone know of a case of the parents of an aborted fetus
mourning the fetus for many years after the abortion, perhaps the
rest of the parents’ lives? Tearfully remembering the fetus’s first
words, or high school graduation or wedding or the camping
trip they all took together? Or the fetus’s smile or the way it
laughed? Of course not. And why is that? Is it not because the
fetus is not a human being in a sufficiently meaningful physical,
social, intellectual, and emotional sense? But the anti-abortion

IDEOLOGY AND SOCIETY

233

activists - often for reasons of sexual prudery, anti-feminism,
religion (the Supreme Court ruling derived from the five Catholic
members of the court), or other personal or political hang-ups
- throw a halo around the fetus, treat the needs and desires of
the parents as nothing, and damn all those who differ with them
as child murderers. Unfortunately, with many of these activists,
their perfect love for human beings doesn’t extend to the human
beings of Iraq or Afghanistan or the many other victims of their
government’s foreign policy.

Abortion and war

About half the states in the US require that a woman seeking an
abortion be told certain things before she can obtain the medical
procedure. In South Dakota, for example, until relatively recently
staff were required to tell women: ‘The abortion will terminate
the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being’... the
pregnant woman has ‘an existing relationship with that unborn
human being,’ a relationship protected by the U.S. Constitution
and the laws of South Dakota. . . and a ‘known medical risk’ of
abortion is an ‘increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide’
among the women having the procedure. A federal judge has now
eliminated the second and third required assertions, calling them
‘untruthful and misleading .’ 2

I personally would question even the hist assertion about a fetus
or an embryo being a human being, but that’s not the point I wish
to make here. I’d like to suggest that before a young American
man or woman can enlist in the armed forces s/he must be told the
following by the staff of the military recruitment office:

The United States is at war [this statement is always factually

correct]. You will likely be sent to a battlefield where you will

be expected to do your best to terminate the lives of whole,

234

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

separate, unique, living human beings you know nothing about
and who have never done you or your country any harm. You
may in the process lose an arm or a leg. Or your life. If you come
home alive and with all your body parts intact there’s a good
chance you will be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Do not expect the government to provide you particularly good
care for that, or any care at all. In any case, you may wind up
physically abusing your spouse and children and/or others,
killing various individuals, abusing drugs and/or alcohol, and
having an increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide. No
matter how bad a condition you may be in, the government may
send you back to the battlefield for another tour of duty. They
call this ‘stop-loss.’ And don’t ever ask any of your officers what
we’re fighting for. Even the generals don’t know. In fact, the gen-
erals especially don’t know. They would never have reached their
high position if they had been able to go beyond the propaganda
we’re all fed, the same propaganda that has influenced you to
come to this office.

Since for so many young people in recent years one of the de-
termining factors in their enlistment has been the economy, this
additional thought should be pointed out to them:

You are enlisting to fight, and perhaps kill, and perhaps die, for a
country that can’t even provide you with affordable education, a
decent job, or perhaps any job at all.

These are the words of Carolyn Chute, novelist, of Maine:

I fear for us all, but I especially fear for those already poor. How
much lower can they go without being cannon fodder or electric
chair fodder or street litter or prison stuffing or just plain lonely
suicide?

Why don’t church leaders forbid Catholics from joining the
military with the same fervor they tell their parishioners to stay
away from abortion clinics?

IDEOLOGY AND SOCIETY

235

All consciences are equal,

but some consciences are more equal than others

(September 6, 2008)

The Bush administration has proposed stronger job protections
for doctors and other healthcare workers who refuse to participate
in abortions because of religious or moral objections. Both sup-
porters and critics say that the new regulations are broad enough
to allow pharmacists, doctors, nurses and others to refuse to
provide birth control pills, Plan B emergency contraception, and
other forms of contraception, while explicitly allowing employees
to withhold information about such services and refuse to refer
patients elsewhere. ‘People should not be forced to say or do
things they believe are morally wrong,’ health and human services
secretary Mike Leavitt said. ‘Health-care workers should not be
forced to provide services that violate their own conscience.’ 3

It’s difficult to argue against such a philosophy. It’s also difficult
to be consistent about it. Do Leavitt and others in the Bush admin-
istration extend this concept to those in the military? If a soldier
in Iraq or Afghanistan is deeply repulsed by his/her involvement
in carrying out the daily horror of the American occupation and
asks to be discharged from the military as a conscientious objec-
tor, will the Pentagon honor his request because ‘people should
not be forced to do things they believe are morally wrong’ ? The
fact that the soldier voluntarily enlisted has no bearing on the
question. A person’s conscience develops from life experiences
and continual reflection. Who’s to say at what precise point a
person’s conscience must rebel against committing war crimes for
the objection to be considered legally or morally valid? Signing
a contract is no reason to be forced to kill people. Moreover, the
pharmacist’s employees also voluntarily took their positions.

Can a healthcare worker strongly opposed to America’s brutal
wars refuse to care for a wounded soldier who has been directly

236

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

involved in the brutality? Can a civilian doctor, pharmacist, or
psychologist in the US refuse to treat a soldier on the grounds
that if they help to restore his health he’ll be sent back to the war
front to continue his killing?

Can peace activists be allowed to withhold the portion of their
income taxes that supports the military? They’ve been trying to
do this for decades without any government support.

The forbidden ‘P’ word

Back now at 8:n with one of our favorite families, the Duggars.
Parents Jim Bob and Michelle became the proud parents of their
nineteenth child back in December. This morning we have an
exclusive first look at their daughter, Josie Brooklyn. She was born
three and a half months premature, but we are happy to report
both mom and baby are doing well. (Meredith Vieira, The Today
Show , NBC, January 28, 2010)

Wow, ain’t that just real neat! Their nineteenth child! Wow, and
mom and baby are doing so well!

Wow, the Duggars and their children were featured on a
television reality show called ‘19 Kids & Counting.’ Wow, just
a newborn and already on a reality show! Pass me some more
pizza.

Wow, if it was up to me, I would have had mom and/or Jim
Bob sterilized after their third child. Wow. Or maybe after their
second. Just tie their damn tubes or something!

‘D.C. area’s population is still blooming: Data shows brisk
growth 163,000 gain in 2 years.’ This is the Washington Post
(March 24, 2010) exulting over the fact that the District of Co-
lumbia has undergone a sharp increase in population in recent
years. Wow, the more the better for the city, right? We all love big
crowds and jammed trains and waiting a long time for everything,
don’t we?

IDEOLOGY AND SOCIETY

237

Wow, people, we’re suffocating in people, we’re drowning
in people. So much of importance, so much that we value and
take pleasure in, is being choked to death by too many people.
But no politician dares touch upon this. Rarely do the main-
stream media do so. In fact, rarely do the alternative media do
so. Population growth is a driving force behind carbon dioxide
emission increases, but it wasn’t on the agenda at the international
environment conference in Copenhagen last December or at any
of the climate talks since then. It appears to be an idea that can
not be discussed in polite society.

Imagine if there were 25 million fewer cars on American
roads. Imagine the effect on travel time, on air pollution, on
accidents, on road rage, on finding a parking space. Imagine
what we could build on the huge amount of space now devoted
to parking lots.

There is overwhelming evidence that the UN’s Millennium
Development Goals will not be achieved if population growth is
not curbed. These goals include eradicating extreme poverty and
hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender
equality, combating HIV/AIDS, and ensuring environmental
sustainability. A lot of the work of NGOs and other activists all
over the world is nullified by population increases.

Many Marxists insist that there’s no pressing need to control
population if we just change the economic system - eliminate
private ownership of the means of production, get rid of the profit
motive, curtail all the unnecessary economic ‘growth’, revise our
economic priorities so as to run society on a rational, humane
basis. Enough food is already produced in the world, they say,
to cover the needs of everyone; it’s the distribution of the food
that’s the problem. There’s a lot to what they say, but I think the
many serious problems caused by overpopulation - from food
and water and transportation to housing, soil erosion, sanitation
and much more will continue to plague the world as long as we

238

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

continue inexorably toward a world of billions more vulnerable
beings. All else being equal, imagine the quality of life in the
United States with too million fewer people. Imagine Chinese
society with an additional 400 million people. This is what the
Chinese government estimates is what the result would be today
if its one-child policy had not been adopted in the 1970s. 4

So I’m advocating a one- or a two-child per family maximum.
This law would not be retroactive.

But I’m not advocating support of US foreign policy, even
though it does its share of population control by killing people
on a regular basis.

All of you who are activists in any way, I urge you not to be afraid
to mention the ‘P’ word. Be inspired by Britain’s Prince Philip,
who said: ‘If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to
Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.’ 5

Homosexuality

‘Do you think homosexuality is a choice, or is it biological?’ was
the question posed to presidential candidate Bill Richardson by
singer Melissa Etheridge. ‘It’s a choice,’ replied the New Mexico
governor at the August 9, 2007 forum for Democratic candidates.
Etheridge then said to Richardson, ‘Maybe you didn’t understand
the question,’ and she rephrased it. Richardson again said he
thought it was a choice. 6

The next time you hear someone say that homosexuality is a
choice, ask them how old they were when they chose to be hetero-
sexual. When they admit that they never made such a conscious
choice, the next question to the person should be: ‘So only homo-
sexuals choose to be homosexual? Heterosexuals do not choose to
be heterosexual? But what comes first, being homosexual so you
can make the choice, or making the choice and thus becoming
homosexual?’

IDEOLOGY AND SOCIETY

239

Marijuana - There’s no evidence like no evidence

A 2007 study concluded:

AIDS patients suffering from debilitating nerve pain got as much
or more relief by smoking marijuana as they would typically get
from prescription drugs - and with fewer side effects - according
to a study conducted under rigorously controlled conditions with
government-grown pot . 7

So, yet another study illustrating the absurdity of marijuana use
being illegal. The anti-marijuana forces usually respond to such
studies with one of their fatuous arguments. My favorite one is
that ‘marijuana use leads to heroin.’ How do they know? Well,
95 percent of all heroin users first used marijuana. That’s how
they know. Of course, 100 percent of all heroin users Erst used
milk. Therefore drinking milk leads to heroin?

How to be (duh) happy

Renowned conservative writer George Will penned a column
celebrating the fact that a survey showed that conservatives
were happier than liberals or moderates. While 34 percent of
all Americans call themselves ‘very happy,’ only 28 percent of
liberal Democrats do, compared with 47 percent of conservative
Republicans. Will asserted that the explanation for these poll
results lies in the fact that conservatives are more pessimistic and
less angry than liberals. If that seems counterintuitive concerning
pessimism, I could suggest you read his column, except that it
wouldn’t be particularly enlightening; the piece is little more
than a vehicle for attacking the welfare state and government
interference in the God-given, wondrous workings of free en-
terprise. ‘Pessimistic conservatives put not their faith in princes
- government - they accept that happiness is a function of fending
for oneself,’ writes Will. 8

240

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

I would suggest that one important reason conservative Re-
publicans may be happier is that their social conscience extends
no further than themselves and their circle of friends, family,
and some groups of other conservative Republicans. George Will
gives no hint that the sad state of the world affects, or should
affect, conservatives’ happiness. In my own case, if my happiness
were based solely on the objective conditions of my particular
life - work, social relations, health, adventure, material comfort,
and so on - I could easily say that I’m very happy. But I’m
blessed/cursed with a social conscience that assails my tranquil-
ity. Reading the fifty varieties of daily horrors in my morning
newspaper - the cruelty of man, the cruelty of nature, the cruelty
of chance - I’m frequently frozen in despair and anger.

I wonder how George Will is able to put this all aside and
keep on smiling. Does it perhaps have to do with the fact that
American foreign policy and American corporations, at home and
abroad, directly and indirectly, are responsible for more of the
misery than any other human agent? While this makes it even
harder for me to take, Mr Will may derive a certain nationalistic
pleasure from the way the world works.

Hillary, the closet conservative?

Among the declared candidates for the 2008 presidential elec-
tions, who do you think said the following on June 20, 2007?

The American military has done its job. Look what they accom-
plished. They got rid of Saddam Hussein. They gave the Iraqis a
chance for free and fair elections. They gave the Iraqi government
the chance to begin to demonstrate that it understood its respon-
sibilities to make the hard political decisions necessary to give
the people of Iraq a better future. So the American military has
succeeded. It is the Iraqi government which has failed to make the
tough decisions which are important for their own people. 9

IDEOLOGY AND SOCIETY

241

Right, it was the woman who wanted to be president, perhaps
still does, because she wants to be president... because she thinks
it would be nice to be president. . . no other reason, no burning
cause, no heartfelt desire for basic change in American society
or to make a better world... she just thinks it would be nice,
even great, to be president of the United States. And keep the
American Empire in business, its routine generating of horror and
misery being no problem; she wouldn’t want to be known as the
president who hastened the decline of the empire.

And she spoke the above words at the ‘Take Back America’
conference; she was speaking to liberals, committed liberal
Democrats. She didn’t have to cater to them with any flag-waving
pro-war rhetoric; they wanted to hear anti-war rhetoric (and she
of course gave them a bit of that as well, out of the other side of
her mouth), so we can assume that this is how she really feels, if
indeed the woman feels anything.

Think of why you were opposed to the Iraq War. Was it not
largely because of all the unspeakable suffering brought down
upon the heads and souls of the poor people of Iraq by the
American military? Hillary Clinton couldn’t care less about that.
She thinks the American military ‘succeeded.’ Did she ever label
the war ‘illegal’ or ‘immoral’? I used to think that Tony Blair
was a member of the right wing or conservative wing of the
British Labour Party. I finally realized one day that that was an
incorrect description of his ideology. Blair is a conservative, a
bloody Tory. How he wound up in the Labour Party is a matter
I haven’t studied. Hillary Clinton, however, I’ve long known is a
conservative; going back to at least the 1980s, while the wife of
the Arkansas governor, she strongly supported the death-squad
torturers known as the Contras, who were the empire’s proxy
army in Nicaragua. 10

Roger Morris, in his excellent study of the Clintons, Partners
in Power , recounts Hillary Clinton aiding Contra fund-raising and

242

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

her lobbying against people or programs hostile to the Contras
or to the Reagan-CIA policies in general. ‘As late as 1987-88,’
Morris writes, ‘amid some of the worst of the Iran-Contra rev-
elations, colleagues heard her still opposing church groups and
others devoted to social reform in Nicaragua and El Salvador.’ 11

In 2007 we read in America’s venerable conservative maga-
zine, William Buckley’s National Review , an editorial by Bruce
Bartlett, policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan, Treasury
official under President George H.W. Bush, a fellow at two of the
leading conservative think tanks, the Heritage Foundation and the
Cato Institute - you get the picture. Bartlett told his readers that
it was almost certain that the Democrats would win the White
House in 2008. So what to do? Support the most conservative
Democrat. He writes: ‘To right-wingers willing to look beneath
what probably sounds to them like the same identical views of
the Democratic candidates, it is pretty clear that Hillary Clinton
is the most conservative.’ 12

We also heard from America’s premier magazine for the corpo-
rate wealthy, Fortune , whose cover at this time featured a picture
of Clinton and the headline: ‘Business Loves Hillary.’ 13

Yet, despite it all, now as then, Hillary’s liberal Democratic
Party supporters think of her as one of their own. This kind of
ideological dumbness permeates the American media and elec-
toral politics and plays no small part in the voters losing their
bearings and their interest.

OUR PRECIOUS ENVIRONMENT

A1 Gore: An Inconvenient Truth

On March 21, 2007, A 1 Gore appeared before a House Energy
and Commerce Committee hearing on global warming. The
star of his documentary him An Inconvenient Truth was told
by Congressman Joe Barton of Texas: ‘You’re not just off a little
- you’re totally wrong.’ In the afternoon Gore testified before the
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, during which
the former vice president was told by Senator James Inhofe of
Oklahoma: ‘You’ve been so extreme in some of your expressions
that you’re losing some of your own people.’ 1

These members of Congress know the facts of economic life
in the United States - fighting global warming is a threat to
the principal human generator of it, corporations, who avail
themselves of the best Congress members money can buy to keep
government regulations as weak as can be.

Does A 1 Gore know the same facts of American economic
life? Of course, but you would have a hard time discerning that
from his much-lauded him. It’s as cowardly in dealing with the
corporations as Gore was in hghting the theft of the 2000 elec-
tion. In the hlm’s hour and a half, the words ‘corporations’ or
‘profit’ are never heard. The closest the him comes to ascribing
a link between the rape of the environment and the incessant

244

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

corporate drive to optimize profits is a single passing mention
of American automakers’ reluctance to increase car gas mileage.
Gore discusses the link between tobacco and lung cancer as an
example of how we have to ‘connect the dots’ on environmental
issues, with no mention of the tobacco companies or their gross
and deliberate decadesdong deception of the American people.
He states at another point that we must choose the environment
over the economy, without any elucidation at all. Otherwise, the
hlm’s message is that it’s up to the individual to change his habits,
to campaign for renewable energy, and to write his Congress
member about this or that. In summary, the basic problem, he
tells us, is that we’re lacking ‘political will.’

It would be most interesting if A 1 Gore were the president to
see how tough he’d get with the corporations, which every day,
around the clock, are faced with choices: one method of operation
available being the least harmful to the environment, another
method being the least harmful to the bottom line. Of course,
Gore was vice president for eight years and was in a fantastic
and enviable position to pressure the corporations to mend their
ways and Congress to enact tougher regulations, as well as to
educate the public on more than their own bad habits. But what
exactly did he do?

But could Gore be elected without corporate money? And how
much of that money would reach his pocket if he advocated free
government-paid public transportation - rail, bus, ferry, and so
on? That would give birth to a breathtaking - or, rather, breath-
enhancing - reduction in automobile pollution.

The greatest consumer of energy and champion spoiler
of the environment is the United States military

Here’s Michael Klare, professor of Peace and World Security
Studies at Hampshire College, Massachusetts in 2007:

OUR PRECIOUS ENVIRONMENT

245

Sixteen gallons of oil. That’s how much the average American
soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan consumes on a daily basis - either
directly, through the use of Humvees, tanks, trucks, and heli-
copters, or indirectly, by calling in air strikes. Multiply this figure
by 162,000 soldiers in Iraq, 24,000 in Afghanistan, and 30,000 in
the surrounding region (including sailors aboard U.S. warships
in the Persian Gulf) and you arrive at approximately 3.5 million
gallons of oil: the daily petroleum tab for U.S. combat operations
in the Middle East war zone. Multiply that daily tab by 365 and
you get 1.3 billion gallons: the estimated annual oil expenditure
for U.S. combat operations in Southwest Asia. That’s greater than
the total annual oil usage of Bangladesh, population 150 million
- and yet it’s a gross underestimate of the Pentagon’s wartime
consumption. 2

The United States military, for decades, with its legion of
bases and its numerous wars, has also produced and left behind
a deadly toxic legacy. From the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam
in the 1960s to the open-air burn pits on US bases in Iraq and
Afghanistan in the twenty-first century, countless local people
have been sickened and killed; and in between those two periods
we could read things such as this from a lengthy article on the
subject in the Los Angeles Times in 1990:

U.S. military installations have polluted the drinking water of the
Pacific island of Guam, poured tons of toxic chemicals into Subic
Bay in the Philippines, leaked carcinogens into the water source of
a German spa, spewed tons of sulfurous coal smoke into the skies
of Central Europe and pumped millions of gallons of raw sewage
into the oceans. 3

The military has caused similar harm to the environment in the
United States at a number of its installations. 4

When I suggest eliminating the military I am usually rebuked
for leaving ‘a defenseless America open to foreign military inva-
sion’. And I usually reply: ‘Tell me who would invade us? Which
country?’

246

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

‘What do you mean which country? It could be any
country.’

‘So then it should be easy to name one.’

‘OK, any of the 200 members of the United Nations!’

‘No, I’d like you to name a specific country that you think
would invade the United States. Name just one.’

‘Okay, Paraguay. You happy now?’

‘No, you have to tell me why Paraguay would invade the United
States.’

‘How would I know?’

If this charming dialogue continues, I ask the person to tell
me how many troops the invading country would have to have
to occupy a country of more than 300 million people.

THE PROBLEM WITH CAPITALISM

Economics 101 remedial

(July 4, 2008)

The economists who defend the perpetual crises of the capitalist
system - the sundry speculative bubbles followed by bursting
bubbles followed by a trail of tears - most often turn to ‘supply
and demand’ as the ultimate explanation and justification for
the system. This provides an impersonal, neutral-sounding,
and respectable, almost scientific, cover for the vagaries of free
enterprise. They would have us believe that we shouldn’t blame
the crises on greed or speculation or manipulation or criminal
activity because such flawed human behavior is overridden by
‘supply and demand.’ It’s a law, remember; ‘the law of supply
and demand’ is its full name. You wouldn’t want them to break
the law, would you?

And where does this ‘law’ come from? Congress? Our ancestral
British Parliament? No, nothing so commonplace, so man-made.
No, they would have us believe that it must come from nature. It
works virtually like an immutable natural law, does it not? And
we violate it or ignore it at our peril.

Thus have we all been raised. But great cracks in the levee
have been appearing in recent years, in unlikely places, such as
the Senate of the United States, which issued a lengthy report

248

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

in 2006 (when a gallon of gasoline had already passed the $3
mark) entitled: ‘The role of market speculation in rising oil and
gas prices.’ Here are some excerpts:

The traditional forces of supply and demand cannot fully account
for these increases [in crude oil, gasoline, etc.]. While global
demand for oil has been increasing . . . global oil supplies have
increased by an even greater amount. As a result, global invento-
ries have increased as well. Today, U.S. oil inventories are at an
8-year high, and OECD [mainly European] oil inventories are at
a 20-year high. Accordingly, factors other than basic supply and
demand must be examined. . . .

Over the past few years, large financial institutions, hedge
funds, pension funds, and other investment funds have been
pouring billions of dollars into the energy commodities markets
... to try to take advantage of price changes or to hedge against
them. Because much of this additional investment has come from
financial institutions and investment funds that do not use the
commodity as part of their business, it is defined as ‘speculation’
by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Ac-
cording to the CFTC, a speculator ‘does not produce or use the
commodity, but risks his or her own capital trading futures in that
commodity in hopes of making a profit on price changes.’ The
large purchases of crude oil futures contracts by speculators have,
in effect, created an additional demand for oil, driving up the price
of oil to be delivered in the future in the same manner that addi-
tional demand for the immediate delivery of a physical barrel of oil
drives up the price on the spot market. ... Although it is difficult
to quantify the effect of speculation on prices, there is substantial
evidence that the large amount of speculation in the current market
has significantly increased prices. 1

The prices arrived at daily on the commodity exchanges (pri-
marily the New York Mercantile Exchange, NYMEX), for the
various kinds of oil are used as principal international pricing
benchmarks, and play an important role in setting the price of
gasoline at the pump.

THE PROBLEM WITH CAPITALISM

249

A good part of the Senate report deals with how the CFTC is
no longer able to properly regulate commodity trading to prevent
speculation, manipulation, or fraud because much of the trading
takes place on commodity exchanges, in the US and abroad, that
are not within the CFTC’s purview.

Persons within the United States seeking to trade key U.S. energy
commodities - U.S. crude oil, gasoline, and heating oil futures
- now can avoid all U.S. market oversight or reporting require-
ments by routing their trades through the ICE Futures exchange
in London instead of the NYMEX in New York. ... To the extent
that energy prices are the result of market manipulation or exces-
sive speculation, only a cop on the beat with both oversight and
enforcement authority will be effective. . . . The trading of energy
commodities by large firms on OTC [over-the-counter] electronic
exchanges was exempted from CFTC oversight by a provision
inserted at the behest of Enron and other large energy traders into
the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000.

A tale told many times. While you and I go about our daily
lives trying to be good citizens, the Big Boys, the Enron Boys, are
busy lobbying the Congress Boys. They call it ‘modernization,’
or some other eye-rolling euphemism, and we get screwed.

The Washington Post recently had this to report on the Enron
and Congress Boys:

Wall Street banks and other large financial institutions have begun
putting intense pressure on Congress to hold off on legislation that
would curtail their highly profitable trading in oil contracts - an
activity increasingly blamed by lawmakers for driving up prices
to record levels. . . . But the executives were met with skepticism
and occasional hostility. ‘Spare us your lecture about supply and
demand,’ one of the Democratic aides said, abruptly cutting off one
of the executives. ... A growing number of members of Congress
have reacted to public outrage over skyrocketing gasoline prices by
introducing at least eight bills that restrict the ability of financial
companies to buy futures contracts, [require companies to]

250

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

disclose more about those investments or stiffen federal oversight
of energy trades. 2

Some further testimony from the 2006 Senate report:

There has been no shortage, and inventories of crude oil and
products have continued to rise. The increase in prices has not
been driven by supply and demand. (Lord Browne, group chief
executive of BP, formerly British Petroleum)

Senator ... I think I have been very clear in saying that I don’t
think that the fundamentals of supply and demand - at least as we
have traditionally looked at it - have supported the price structure
that’s there. (Lee Raymond, chairman and CEO, ExxonMobil)

What’s been happening since 2004 is very high prices without
record-low stocks. The relationship between U.S. [oil] inventory
levels and prices has been shredded, has become irrelevant. (Jan
Stuart, global oil economist, UBS Securities, which calls itself ‘the
leading global wealth manager’)

In 2008, when a gallon of gasoline had passed the $4 mark,
OPEC secretary general Abdalla Salem el-Badri stated: ‘There is
clearly no shortage of oil in the market.’ El-Badri ‘blamed high oil
prices on investors seeking “better returns” in commodities after
a drop in equity prices and the value of the dollar.’ 3

Finally, defenders of the way the system works insist that the
oil companies have been experiencing great increases in their
costs, due particularly to oil running out, so-called ‘peak oil.’ It
costs much more to find and extricate the remaining oil and the
companies have to pass these costs to the consumer. Well, class,
if that is so, then the companies should be making about the same
net profit as before peak oil - $v more in expenses, $x added to
the price, the same amount of profit, albeit a lower percentage
of profit to sales, something of interest primarily to Wall Street,
not to ordinary human beings. But the oil companies have not
done that. Their increases in price and profit defy gravity and

THE PROBLEM WITH CAPITALISM

251

are not on the same planet as any increases in costs. Moreover,
as economist Robert Weissman of the Multinational Monitor has
observed, ‘While the price of oil is going up, these companies’
drilling expenses are not. Oil can trade at $40 a barrel, $90 a
barrel, or $130 a barrel. It still costs ExxonMobil and the rest of
Big Oil only about $20 to get a barrel of oil out of the ground. 54

The above is not meant to be the last word on the subject
of why our gasoline is so expensive. Too much information is
hidden, by speculators, oil companies, refiners, and others; too
much activity is unregulated; too much is moved by psychology
more than economics. The best solution would be to get rid of all
the speculative markets - unless they can demonstrate that they
serve a useful human purpose - and nationalize the oil companies.
(Oh my God, he used the ‘N’ word!)

A hundred ways to get rich
without doing anything socially useful

(October 1, 2008)

Why do we have this thing called a ‘financial crisis’? Why have
we had such a crisis periodically ever since the United States was
created? What changes occur or what happens each time to bring
on the crisis? Do we forget how to make things that people need?
Do the factories burn down? Are our tools lost? Do the blueprints
disappear? Do we run out of people to work in the factories and
offices? Are all the products and services that people need for a
happy life so well taken care of that there’s hardly any more need
for the products and services? In other words: what changes take
place in the real world to cause the crisis? Nothing, necessarily.
The crisis is usually caused by changes in the make-believe world
of financial capitalism.

All these grown men playing their boys’ games. They create
an assortment of financial entities, documents, and packages

252

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

that go by names like hedge funds, derivatives, collateralized
debt obligations, index funds, credit default swaps, structured
investment vehicles, subprime mortgages, and dozens of other
exotic monetary creations. They devise all manner of commercial
pieces of paper, of no known real or inherent value, backed up
by few if any standards, for which, it must be kept in mind,
there had been no public need or strident demand. Then they
sell these various pieces of paper to the public and to each other.
They slice and dice mortgages into arcane and risky instruments,
then bundle them together, and sell the packages to those higher
up in the pyramid scheme. And some of those engaged in this
Wild West buying and selling become millionaires. Some become
billionaires. They get Christmas bonuses greater than what most
Americans earn the entire year. Is all this not remarkable?

And much of the buying is not done with the buyer’s own
money, but with borrowed funds; ‘leveraged,’ they call it. The
pieces of paper sometimes represent commodities, but the
actual commodities are not seen, may not even exist; if the seller
demanded the buyer’s own funds, or the buyer wanted to see
the goods, the whole transaction would freeze. They sell ‘long,’
expecting the price to rise; they sell ‘short,’ expecting the price
to fall; they sell ‘naked short,’ which means they neither possess
nor own what they’re selling; a name for each gimmick. They take
ever-greater risks buying and selling increasingly esoteric pieces
of paper. It’s a glorified Las Vegas. Casino capitalism.

These pieces of paper can be so complex and opaque that many
of those buying and selling them do not fully understand them;
no problem, they just resell the pieces of paper to someone else
at a higher price, even when one or both parties know that the
paper, while pretending to represent payable debt, is virtually
worthless. The government, even when it tries to moderately
regulate this Monopoly board, can at times also be confused
by the complexities of the pieces of paper, compounded by the

THE PROBLEM WITH CAPITALISM

253

less-than-transparent practices that envelop the transactions - a
potpourri including speculation, manipulation, fraud. Billionaire
financier Warren Buffett has called the pieces of paper ‘weapons
of mass financial destruction.’

The boys of finance have been playing their games for years,
and so at each stage of the process there are insurance policies
allowing the players to hedge their bets; they insure, and they
re-insure; hopefully covering themselves against the many risks
of the game, often knowing that they’re trading in questionable
debts; the giant corporation AIG, a major player in the insur-
ance game, was taken over by the federal government. And with
each transaction, at each level, someone earns a commission or
a fee. There are also other firms whose purpose in life is to go
around rating various players and their pieces of paper and their
creditworthiness and giving seals of approval which are relied
upon by investors. The supposedly objective credit-rating agen-
cies told everyone that various firms and their bundles of paper
were good investments, but the credit-rating agencies in fact had
played a role themselves in putting some of the bundles together.
President Roosevelt, confronted in the 1930s with similar players,
called them ‘banksters.’

It’s all built on faith, as fragile as the religious kind, the belief
that something is worth something because it comes with a
piece of paper with reassuring words and numbers written on
it, because it’s traded, rated, and insured, because someone will
sell it and someone will buy it. The same market psychology, the
same herd mentality, that went into constructing this house of
cards built on pillars of greed can cause the house to collapse in
a heap. But the Monopoly players keep their bonuses, and bow
out with multimillion-dollar golden parachutes; while tent cities
are springing up all over America.

And the government is in the process of trying to bail out these
reckless traders, these parasites, rescuing them and their system

254

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

from their own nonsense. With our money; without a major
restructuring of the Alice in Wonderland rules of the financial
games, without instituting the toughest of regulations, oversight,
and transparency, and with no guarantee that the spoiled-little-
brat Masters of the Universe will act in any way other than in
their own narrow self-interest, the rest of us be damned.

Capitalism is the theory that the worst people, acting from their
worst motives, will somehow produce the most good.

There is perhaps some consolation. The libertarian and neo-
conservative true believers will have a harder time selling their
snake oil of privatization of Social Security or any other social
program. Government regulation of matters vital to the public’s
welfare may be taken more seriously. We may hear less of that old
bromide that markets are inherently self-correcting. It may even
give a boost to the idea of national health insurance.

And the libertarians and neoconservatives are hurting and
defensive, albeit not yet admitting to any new-found wisdom. A
Washington Post interview with some true believers at the Cato
Institute, where Ayn Rand’s picture prominently hangs, produced
these statements: ‘Too much regulation got us where we are’...
‘The biggest emotion we’re feeling right now is frustration that
the media narrative is that this is a crisis of the free market, a
crisis of capitalism, a crisis of under-regulation. In fact it’s a crisis
of subsidization and intervention’. . . ‘Capitalism without losses is
like religion without hell.’ 5

And just think: Cuba has been tormented without mercy
for fifty years because it refuses to live under such a financial
system.

Some of the other charms of our capitalist system

The Dow Jones industrial average of blue-chip stocks in New
York fell 635 points on Monday August 8, 2011.

THE PROBLEM WITH CAPITALISM

255

On Tuesday it rose by 430 points.

On Wednesday, the market, in its infinite wisdom, decided to
fall again, this time by 520 points.

And on Thursday. . . yes, it rose once again, by 423 points.

The Dow changed directions for eight consecutive trading
sessions. The Washington Post's senior economic columnist,
Steven Pearlstein, wrote on August 14, 2011 of the four days
described above: ‘I suppose there are some schnooks who actually
believe that those wild swings in stock prices last week represented
sober and serious concerns by thoughtful, sophisticated investors
about the Treasury debt downgrade or European sovereign debt
or a slowdown in global growth. But surely such perceptions don’t
radically change each afternoon between 2 and 4:30, when the
market averages last week were gyrating out of control.’

We go from the dotcom bubble to the stock market bubble to the
Enron bubble to the housing bubble to the credit bubble... and
with each burst of a bubble many lose jobs, homes, dreams.

‘It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both
incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is inter-
rupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper’ (Rod
Serling, famed television writer).

Can it be imagined that an American president would openly
implore America’s young people to fight a foreign war to defend
‘capitalism’? The word itself has largely gone out of fashion. The
approved references now are to the market economy, free market,
free enterprise, or private enterprise. This change in terminology
endeavors to obscure the role of wealth in the economic and social
system. And avoiding the word ‘capitalism’ sheds the adverse
connotation going back to Karl Marx.

At some unrecorded moment a few years ago, the egg companies
of America changed their package labels from small, medium, and

256

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

large to medium, large, and jumbo. The eggs remained exactly
the same size.

‘The Federal Trade Commission concluded that there is very little
connection between what drug companies charge for a drug and
the costs directly associated with it .’ 6

‘The makers of aspirin wish you had a headache right now,’ says
the graffiti.

Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property, and corporate
personhood is the legal fiction that property is a person. ‘The
private-benefit corporation is an institution granted a legally
protected right - some would claim obligation - to pursue a
narrow private interest without regard to broader social and
environmental consequences. If it were a real person, it would fit
the clinical profile of a sociopath,’ notes David Korten.

Ralph Nader once charged the Justice Department anti-trust
division with going out of business without telling anyone.

Capitalism as practiced in the United States is like chemotherapy:
it may kill the cancer cells of consumer shortages, but the side
effects are devastating.

Many workers are paid a wage sufficient to allow them to keep
on living, even if it’s not a living wage. Here’s a radical solution
to poverty: pay people enough to live on.

‘The paradox is that, three centuries after America’s colonial
beginnings, wealth and income are more unequally distributed
in the “New World” than in most of the nations of Europe .’ 7
How could the current distribution of property and wealth have
emerged from any sort of democratic process?

How many Americans realize that they have a much longer work
week, much shorter vacations, much shorter unemployment

THE PROBLEM WITH CAPITALISM

257

coverage, much worse maternity leave and other employee ben-
efits, and much worse medical coverage than their West European
counterparts?

In expressing elementary truths about the oppression of the poor
by the rich in the United States, one runs the risk of being
accused of ‘advocating class warfare’; because the trick of class
war is to not let the victims know the war is being waged.

What do the CEOs do all day that they should earn a thousand
times more than schoolteachers, nurses, firefighters, street clean-
ers, and social workers? Reread some medieval history, about
feudal lords and serfs.

The campaigns of the anti-regulationists imply that pure food
and drugs will be ours as soon as we abolish the pure food and
drug laws.

What takes place in the world of economics is 60 percent
power-politics-ideology-speculation, 30 percent psychological,
10 percent immutable laws. (These percentages are immutable.)

The more you care about others, the more you’re at a disadvantage
competing in the capitalist system.

To say that 1 percent of the population owns 35 percent of the
resources and wealth, is deceptive. If you own 35 percent you
can control much more than that.

The myth and mystique of ‘choice’ persuades us to endorse the
privatization of almost every sphere of activity.

A study of 17,595 federal government jobs by the Office of Manage-
ment and Budget in 2004 concluded that civil servants could do
their work better and more cheaply than private contractors nearly
90 percent of the time in job competitions. 8

258

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

Communist governments take over companies. Under capitalism,
the companies take over the government.

The American oligarchy has less in common with the American
people than it does with the oligarchies in Japan and France.

If you lose money gambling, you can’t take a tax deduction. But
you can if you lose on the glorified slot machine known as the
stock market; your loss is thus subsidized by taxpayers.

Do the members of a family relate to each other on the basis of
self-interest and greed?

‘The idea that egotism is the basis of the general welfare is the
principle on which competitive society has been built’ (Erich
Fromm, German-American social psychologist).

‘The twentieth century has been characterized by three develop-
ments of great political importance: the growth of democracy;
the growth of corporate power; and the growth of corporate
propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against
democracy’ (Alex Carey, Australian social scientist).

August, 2011: ‘Pope Benedict XVI denounced the proht-at-all-cost
mentality that he says is behind Europe’s economic crisis’ as he
arrived in hard-hit Spain. ‘The economy doesn’t function with
market self-regulation,’ he said, ‘but needs an ethical reason to
work for mankind. . . . Man must be at the center of the economy,
and the economy cannot be measured only by maximization of
profit but rather according to the common good.’ 9

May, 2010: ‘I am a Marxist,’ said the Dalai Lama. Marxism has
‘moral ethics, whereas capitalism is only how to make profits.’ 10

‘The country needs to be born again, she is polluted with the lust
of power, the lust of gain’ (Margaret Fuller, literary critic, New
York Tribune, July 4, 1845).

THE PROBLEM WITH CAPITALISM

259

None of the above, of course, will deter the world’s only super-
power from continuing its jihad to impose capitalist fundamental-
ism upon the world.

In the land where happiness is guaranteed
in the Declaration of Independence

‘Think raising the minimum wage is a good idea?’ ‘Think again.’
That was the message of a full-page advertisement that appeared
in major newspapers in January 2007. It was accompanied by
statements of approval from the usual eminent suspects: ‘The
reason I object to the minimum wage is I think it destroys jobs,
and I think the evidence on that, in my judgment, is overwhelm-
ing’ (Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman); ‘The
high rate of unemployment among teenagers, and especially black
teenagers, is both a scandal and a serious source of social unrest.
Yet it is largely a result of minimum wage laws’ (Milton Friedman,
Nobel prizewinning economist).

Well, if raising the minimum wage can produce such negative
consequences, then surely it is clear what we as an enlightened and
humane people must do. We must lower the minimum wage. And
thus enjoy less unemployment, less social unrest. Indeed, if we
lower the minimum wage to zero, particularly for poor blacks...
think of it! No unemployment at all! Hardly any social unrest! In
fact - dare I say it? - what if we did away with wages altogether?

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exer-
cises in moral philosophy: that is, the search for a superior moral
justification for selfishness. (John Kenneth Galbraith)

Eat the rich, share your recipes

With Bill Gates’s announcement that he’ll be phasing out his
day-to-day participation in Microsoft, the media have carried a
lot of adulatory stories about the wunderkind , who became the

26 o

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

world’s youngest self-made billionaire at age 31. I do not mean to
detract from Gates’s accomplishments when I point out that for
him to have become a billionaire just six years after introducing
the MS-DOS 1.0 operating system, Microsoft had to be charging
a lot more - an awful lot more - for its software than it had to
based on the company’s costs.

There are those, enamored by the philosophy, practice, and
folklore of free enterprise and rugged individualism, who will
declare: ‘More power to the guy! He deserves every penny of it!’
There are others, enamored by the vision of a more equitable
society, who question how the current distribution of property
and wealth can reasonably be said to derive from any sort of
democratic process. This is the twenty-first century; American
society should not be suffocating on 2 percent with breathtaking
wealth and 75 percent with a daily struggle for a decent life. In
fact, along such lines we’re regressing.

This is almost heresy to many Americans, who are unwilling
to tamper with political and economic arrangements, though they
have no qualms about meddling with other people’s sex lives,
women’s bodies, and other moral issues. Greed and selfishness
are natural, they insist, and have to be catered to.

But if the system should cater to selfishness because it’s natural,
why not cater to aggression, which many of the same people claim
is also natural?

Some questions to ask our quaint little Tea Party friends

The Tea Party folks never tire of calling for ‘smaller government.’
How sweet. Most other Republicans repeat the same mantra ad
nauseam as well, as do many liberals (not to be confused with
progressives). So, for all these individuals I have some questions:

• When there’s a plane crash the government sends investigators

to the crash site to try to determine the cause of the accident;

THE PROBLEM WITH CAPITALISM

26l

this is information that can be used to make air travel safer.
But it’s really big government , forcing the airlines to fully
cooperate, provide all relevant information - secrecy is not
permitted - and make changes or face severe penalties. Do
you think the government should stop doing this?

Following the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, was the
government right to bully and threaten the company for an
explanation and solution for the catastrophe, or should it have
been ‘hands off’ for the sake of small government?

Following a major earthquake there’s usually a cry from many
quarters: stores should not be raising prices for basic neces-
sities like water, generators, batteries, tree-removal services,
diapers, and so on. More grievances soon arise because land-
lords raise rents on vacant apartments after many dwellings
in the city have been rendered uninhabitable. ‘How dare they
do that?’ people wail. Following the 1994 earthquake in Los
Angeles the California Assembly proceeded to make it a crime
for merchants to increase prices for vital goods and services
by more than 10 percent after a natural disaster. 11 Follow-
ing the destruction caused by Hurricane Isabel in September
2003, the governor and attorney general of Virginia called on
the legislature to pass the state’s first anti-price-gouging law
after receiving around a hundred complaints from residents.
North Carolina had enacted an anti-gouging law just shortly
before. 12 Does such blatant big-government interference in our
God-given supply-and- demand system bother you? Do you
think that our legislators should simply allow ‘the magic of
the marketplace’ to do its magic?

Do you think that the government should continue waging
war against what they call ‘terrorists’ abroad, since there’s no
bigger or more expensive big-government action than this?
Do you think the government should continue with its highly
intrusive electronic strip searches and body feel-ups at airports

262

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

or should we allow the risk of bombs being brought on board
airplanes?

• If your bank fails - and hundreds have done so in recent years in
the United States - are you willing to accept the loss of your life’s
savings? Or are you thankful that big, big government steps in,
takes over the bank, and protects every penny of your savings?

• Do you think that big government - federal, state, or local
- should stop haranguing the citizenry about the environment:
recycling, air pollution, water pollution, soil runoff, and so on,
or that people should simply be allowed to do what is most
convenient for them, their families, and their businesses?

• Do you think that American manufacturers should have the
right to run their factories like the sweatshops in a Bangkok
alley fifty years ago or that big government should throw its
weight around to assure modern working conditions, with
worker health-and-safety standards?

• When a prescription drug starts to kill or harm more and more
people, who should decide when to pull it off the market: big
government or the drug’s manufacturer?

• Are you glad that food packages list the details of ingredients
and nutrition? Who do you think is responsible for this?

• A huge number of Americans would be facing serious hunger
if not for their food stamps; more than 45 million receive them.
Where do you think food stamps come from?

• And where do you think unemployment insurance, housing
subsidies, and Medicare come from? (There were of course,
Lord help us, the Tea Party signs: ‘Keep your government
hands off my Medicare,’ 13 while simultaneously ridiculing
Obama’s push for ‘socialized medicine.’)

• Would some of you rather see widespread hunger, poverty,
homelessness, and illness in America than have people depen-
dent upon the Big Government Monster?

THE PROBLEM WITH CAPITALISM

263

The climax of civilization, American style

Main Street is the climax of civilization.

That this Ford car might stand in front of
the Bon Ton store, Hannibal invaded Rome
and Erasmus wrote in Oxford cloisters.

(Sinclair Lewis, ‘Main Street,’ 1920)

Piles of advertising circulars clutter the lobby of my apartment
building; they’re hardly touched, remaining there until the
cleaning person decides to toss them in the trash. For this, trees
are cut down; dioxin, a by-product of paper-making, exceed-
ingly toxic, is directly expelled into the water from paper mills;
incalculable amounts of energy and other resources are used to
print all the pages. Imagine all the people and vehicles needed to
deliver the circulars. Multiply my building by millions.

‘If it takes a $200 billion advertising industry to maintain what
economists quaintly call “demand”, then perhaps that demand
isn’t as urgent as conventional theory posits. Perhaps it’s not even
demand in any sane meaning of the word.’ 14

Advertising is the climax of civilization.

That this circular for Wahnart might sit in

the lobbies of apartment buildings, this

television program interrupted to bring you proof that

Coke is superior to Pepsi, and this billboard ruining

the view, George W. Bush invaded Iraq and Paul Wolfowitz

studied at the University of Chicago.

You can’t make this stuff up

One of the most quoted aphorisms of the Western world: ‘The
law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor
to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread’
(Anatole France, 1844-1924).

264

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

On April 14, 2006 a federal appeals court ruled that the Los
Angeles Police Department cannot arrest people for sitting, lying,
or sleeping on public sidewalks on Skid Row, saying such enforce-
ment amounts to cruel and unusual punishment because there are
not enough shelter beds for the city’s huge homeless population.
Judge Pamela A. Rymer issued a strong dissent against the major-
ity opinion. The Los Angeles code ‘does not punish people simply
because they are homeless,’ wrote Rymer. ‘It targets conduct
- sitting, lying or sleeping on city sidewalks - that can be com-
mitted by those with homes as well as those without.’ 15

‘There is no alternative!’

‘Really? There had better be or we’re all doomed!’

Some thoughts about socialism

‘History is littered with post-crisis regulations. If there are undue
restrictions on the operations of businesses, they may view it to be
their job to get around them, and you sow the seeds of the next
crisis.’ So said Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment analyst, Charles
Schwab & Co., a leading US provider of investment services. 16

And so it goes. Corporations, whether financial or not, strive to
maximize profit as inevitably as water seeks its own level. We’ve
been trying to ‘regulate’ them since the nineteenth century. Or is
it the eighteenth? Nothing helps for long. You close one loophole
and the slime oozes out of another hole. Wall Street has not only
an army of lawyers and accountants, but a horde of mathemati-
cians with advanced degrees searching for the perfect equations
to separate people from their money. After all the stimulus money
has come and gone, after all the speeches by our leaders condemn-
ing greed and swearing to reform, after the last congressional
hearing deploring corporate executives to their faces, the boys
of Wall Street, shrugging off a few bruises, will resume churning
out their assortment of exotic financial instruments. Speculation,

THE PROBLEM WITH CAPITALISM

265

bonuses, and Scotch will flow again, and the boys will be all the
wiser, perhaps shaken a bit that they’re so reviled, but knowing
better now what to flaunt and what to disguise.

This is another reminder that communism or socialism
have almost always been given just one chance to work, if that
much, while capitalism has been given numerous chances to do
so following its perennial fiascos. Ralph Nader has observed:
‘Capitalism will never fail because socialism will always be there
to bail it out.’

In the West, one of the most unfortunate results of the Cold War
was that seventy years of anti-communist education and media
stamped in people’s minds a lasting association between socialism
and what the Soviet Union called communism. Socialism meant a
dictatorship, it meant Stalinist repression, a suffocating ‘command
economy,’ no freedom of enterprise, no freedom to change jobs,
few avenues for personal expression, and other similar truths,
half-truths, and untruths. This is a set of beliefs clung to even
among many Americans opposed to US foreign policy. No matter
how bad the economy is, Americans think, the only alternative
available is something called ‘communism,’ and they know how
awful that is.

Adding to the purposeful confusion, the conservatives in
Britain, for thirty years following the end of World War II, filled
the minds of the public with the idea that the Labour Party was
socialist, and when recession hit (as it does regularly in capitalist
countries) the public was then told, and believed, that ‘socialism
had failed.’

Yet, ever since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991,
polls taken in Russia have shown a nostalgia for the old system.
In 2009, for example, Russia Now , a Moscow publication that
appears as a supplement in the Washington Post , asked Russians :
‘What socio-economic system do you favor?’ The results were:
‘State planning and distribution’ - 58 percent; ‘Based on private

266

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

property and market relations’ - 28 percent; ‘Hard to say’ - 14
percent. 17

In 1994, Mark Brzezinski (son of Zbigniew) was a Fulbright
scholar teaching in Warsaw. He has written:

I asked my students to define democracy. Expecting a discussion
on individual liberties and authentically elected institutions, I was
surprised to hear my students respond that to them, democracy
means a government obligation to maintain a certain standard of
living and to provide health care, education and housing for all. In
other words, socialism. 18

Many Americans cannot go along with the notion of a planned,
centralized society. To some extent it’s the terminology that
bothers them because they were raised to equate a planned
society with the worst excesses of Stalinism. OK, let’s forget the
scary labels; let’s describe it as people sitting down to discuss
a particular serious societal problem, what the available options
there are to solve the problem, and what institutions and forces in
the society have the best access, experience, and assets to deliver
those options. So, the idea is to prepare these institutions and
forces to deal with the problem in a highly organized, rational
manner without having to worry about which corporation’s profits
might be adversely affected, without having to rely on ‘the magic
of the marketplace.’ Now it happens that all this is usually called
‘planning,’ and if the organization and planning stem from a
government body it can be called ‘centralized planning.’ There’s
no reason to assume that this has to result in some kind of very
authoritarian regime. All of us over a certain age - individually
and collectively - have learned a lot about such things from the
past. We know the warning signs ; that’s why the Bush and Obama
administrations’ assaults on civil liberties and human rights have
been so strongly condemned.

The overwhelming majority of people in the United States
work for a salary. They don’t need to be motivated by the quest

THE PROBLEM WITH CAPITALISM

267

for profit. It’s not in our genes. Virtually everybody, if given the
choice, would prefer to work at jobs where the main motivations
are to produce goods and services that improve the quality of
life of the society, to help others, and to provide themselves with
meaningful and satisfying work. It’s not natural to be primarily
motivated by trying to win or steal ‘customers’ from other people,
no holds barred, survival of the fittest or the most ruthless.

A major war can be the supreme test of a nation, a time when
it’s put under the greatest stress. In World War II, the US gov-
ernment commandeered the auto manufacturers to make tanks
and jeeps instead of private cars. When a pressing need for an
atom bomb was seen, Washington did not ask for bids from the
private sector; it created the Manhattan Project to do it itself,
with no concern for balance sheets or profit-and-loss statements.
Women and blacks were given skilled factory jobs they had been
traditionally denied. Hollywood was enlisted to make propaganda
films. Indeed, much of the nation’s activities, including farming,
manufacturing, mining, communications, labor, education, and
cultural undertakings were in some fashion brought under new
and significant government control, with the war effort coming
before private profit. In peacetime, we can think of socialism
as putting people before profit, with all the basics guaranteed
- healthcare, all education, decent housing, food, jobs. Those who
swear by free enterprise argue that the ‘socialism’ of World War
II was instituted only because of the exigencies of the war. That’s
true, but it doesn’t alter the key point that it had been immediately
recognized by the government that the wasteful and inefficient
capitalist system, always in need of proper financial care and
feeding, was no way to run a country trying to win a war.

It’s also no way to run a society of human beings with human
needs. Most Americans agree with this but are not consciously
aware that they hold such a belief. In 1987, nearly half of 1,004
Americans surveyed by the Hearst press believed that Karl Marx’s

268

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

aphorism ‘From each according to his ability, to each according
to his need’ was to be found in the US Constitution . 19

I cannot describe in detail what every nut and bolt of my
socialist society would look like. That might appear rather preten-
tious on my part; most of it would evolve through trial and error
anyway; the important thing is that the foundation - the crucial
factors in making the important decisions - would rest on people’s
welfare and the common good coming before profit. Humankind’s
desperate need to halt environmental degradation regularly runs
smack into the profit motive, as does the American healthcare
system. It’s more than a matter of ideology; it’s a matter of the
quality of life, sustainability, and survival.

THE MEDIA

National Pentagon Radio

In 2008, WAMU, the Washington, DC National Public Radio
(NPR) station, asked its listeners to write and tell it what they
used the station as a source for. Some of those who replied were
invited in for a recorded interview, and a tape of part of the inter-
view was played on the air. I sent them the following email:
June 13, 2008
Dear People,

I use WAMU to listen to All Things Considered. I use All Things
Considered to get the Pentagon point of view on US foreign policy.
It’s great hearing retired generals explain why the US has just
bombed or invaded another country. Pm not bothered by any naive
anti-war protesters. I get the official truth right from the horse’s
mouth. Is this a great country, or what? I hope you’re lining up
some more great retired generals to tell me why we had to bomb
Iran and kill thousands more people. Just make sure you don’t
make me listen to anyone on the left.

Sincerely, William Blum, who should be on Diane Rehm,
but never will be asked.

[This was followed by some information about my books.]

I had no expectation of any kind of positive reply. I figured that
if my letter didn’t do it, then surely the titles of my books would

270

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

reveal that I’m not actually a lover of the American military or
their wars. But I don’t really want to believe the worst about the
mainstream media. That’s too discouraging. So it was a pleasant
surprise when someone at the station invited me to come in for
an interview. It lasted more than half an hour and went very well.
I expressed many of my misgivings about US foreign policy and
NPR’s coverage of it in no uncertain terms, even pointing out that
anti-war activists referred to NPR as National Pentagon Radio.
The interviewer said he was very pleased. He expected this was
going to be an interesting piece for the station to broadcast. But,
as it turned out, that was the end of the matter. I never heard from
the station again, and my interview was never broadcast.

About two months later I sent an email to the interviewer asking
if the interview would be aired. I could verify that he received
it, but I got no reply. I think the interviewer had been sincere,
which is why I’m not mentioning his name. Someone above him
must have listened to the tape, remembered where ‘public’ radio’s
real loyalty lay (with its primary funder, Congress), and vetoed
the whole thing. My (lack of) faith in American mass media has
not been challenged. And those who work in the mass media
will continue to believe in what they practice, something they
call ‘objectivity.’

The audience contributes its share to the syndrome. Consumers
of news, if fed American-exceptionalism junk food long enough,
come to feel at home with it, equate it with objectivity, and
equate objectivity with getting a full and balanced picture, or the
‘truth’; it appears neutral and unbiased, like the old comfortable
living-room sofa they’re sitting on as they watch NBC or CNN.
They view the ‘alternative media,’ with a style rather different
from what they’re accustomed to, as not being ‘objective’ enough,
therefore suspect.

The president of NPR, incidentally, is a gentleman named
Kevin Klose. Previously he helped coordinate all US-funded

THE MEDIA

271

international broadcasting: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
(Central Europe and the Soviet Union), Voice of America, Radio
Free Asia, Radio/TV Marti (Cuba), Worldnet Television (Africa
and elsewhere); all created specifically to disseminate world news
to a target audience through the prism of US foreign policy
beliefs and goals. He also served as president of Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty. Would it be unfair to say that Americans
then became his newest target audience? All unconscious of
course; that’s what makes the mass media so effective; they really
believe in their own objectivity; while I will continue to believe
that objectivity is no substitute for honesty.

Diane Rehrn has a large and loyal listenership on National
Public Radio, and I think she does a pretty good job with her
very wide-ranging interviews, but the woman has a deep-seated
flaw: she doesn’t understand ideology very well - right from left,
conservative from liberal, liberal from radical leftist, and so on.
Time and time again she gathers a group to discuss some very
controversial issue, and there is not among their number a single
person of genuine leftist credentials, or even close to it; and, from
a number of remarks I’ve heard her make, my guess is that this
is not because she has a conservative bias, but rather that she
has an inadequate comprehension of what distinguishes left from
right; although whoever helps her choosing guests may well be
conscious of what they’re doing.

The program of February 27, 2007 (with someone sitting in
for Rehm) is a case in point. The topic was Iran - all the con-
troversial issues surrounding that country were on the table.
The discussants were: (i) someone from the Council on Foreign
Relations (CFR), the oldest, most traditional private institution
in support of US imperialism; (ii) someone from the American
Enterprise Institute, which makes CFR look positively progres-
sive; (iii) someone from the Brookings Institution, which is about
on a par with CFR ideologically. The Brookings representative

272

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

was Kenneth Pollack, former CIA analyst and National Security
Council staffer, who will always be remembered (or at least should
be) for his 2002 book The Threatening Storm: The Case for
Invading Iraq. Can we look forward to his next book, The Case
for Global Warming ?

In a society which pays so much lip service to dissent, free
speech, and town-hall ‘balanced’ discussions, the lineup of Diane
Rehrn’s guests is depressingly typical in the mainstream world.
Whether it’s the 9/11 Commission, the Iraq Study Group, the
Congressional JFK assassination committee, or any of dozens
of other congressional investigating committees over the years,
the questioning, challenging, progressive point of view is almost
always represented by an empty chair.

‘In America you can say anything you want -
as long as it doesn’t have any effect’ - Paul Goodman

Progressive activists and writers bemoan the fact that the news
they generate and the opinions they express are consistently
ignored by the mainstream media, and thus kept from the masses
of the American people. This disregard of the progressive point
of view is tantamount to a definition of the mainstream media.
It doesn’t have to be a conspiracy; it’s a matter of who owns the
mainstream media and the type of journalists they hire - men and
women who would like to keep their jobs; so it’s more insidious
than a conspiracy, it’s what’s built into the system, it’s how the
system works. The disregard of the progressive world is of course
not total; at times some of that world makes too good copy to
ignore, and, on rare occasions, progressive ideas, when they
threaten to become very popular, have to be countered.

So it was with Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United
States , a history of the US written primarily from the point of
view of those below - workers, farmers, soldiers, the poor, and so

THE MEDIA

273

on, instead of from the point of view of traditional history books
- government officials, corporate executives, law enforcement
officials, the rich, and so on. Here’s Barry Gewen, an editor at
the New York Times Book Review , June 5, 2005, writing of Zinn’s
book and others like it:

There was a unifying vision, but it was simplistic. Since the
victims and losers were good, it followed that the winners were
bad. From the point of view of downtrodden blacks, America was
racist; from the point of view of oppressed workers, it was exploita-
tive; from the point of view of conquered Hispanics and Indians,
it was imperialistic. There was much to condemn in American
history, little or nothing to praise. ... Whereas the Europeans who
arrived in the New World were genocidal predators, the Indians
who were already there believed in sharing and hospitality (never
mind the profound cultural differences that existed among them),
and raped Africa was a continent overflowing with kindness and
communalism (never mind the profound cultural differences that
existed there).

One has to wonder whether Mr Gewen thought that all the victims
of the Holocaust were saintly and without profound cultural
differences.

Prominent American historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr once
said of Zinn: ‘I know he regards me as a dangerous reactionary.
And I don’t take him very seriously. He’s a polemicist, not a
historian.’

In the obituaries that followed Zinn’s death, this particular
defamation was picked up around the world, from the New York
Times , Washington Post , and the leading American wire services
to the New Zealand Herald and Korea Tunes.

Regarding reactionaries and polemicists, it is worth noting that
Mr Schlesinger as a top adviser to President John F. Kennedy,
played a key role in the overthrow of Cheddi Jagan, the democrati-
cally elected progressive prime minister of British Guiana (now
Guyana). In 1990, at a conference in New York City, Schlesinger

274

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

publicly apologized to Jagan, saying: ‘I felt badly about my role
thirty years ago. I think a great injustice was done to Cheddi
Jagan. 51 This is to Schlesinger’s credit, although the fact that Jagan
was present at the conference may have awakened his conscience
after thirty years. Like virtually all the American historians of the
period who were granted attention and respect by the mainstream
media, Schlesinger was a cold warrior. Those like Zinn, who
questioned the basic suppositions of the Cold War abroad and
capitalism at home, were regarded as polemicists.

America’s presstitutes

Imagine that the vicious police attack of October 25, 2011 on the
Occupy Oakland encampment had taken place in Iran or Cuba
or Venezuela or in any other ODE (officially designated enemy)
... Page One Righteous Indignation with Shocking Photos! But
here’s the Washington Post the next day, with a three-inch story on
page three with a headline: ‘Protesters wearing out their welcome
nationwide 5 ; no mention of the Iraqi veteran left unconscious from
a police projectile smashing into his head. As to photos, just one:
an Oakland police officer petting a cat that was left behind by
the protesters.

And here’s television comedian Jay Leno the same night as the
police attack in Oakland: ‘They say Moammar Gaddafi may have
been one of the richest men in the world ... 200 billion dollars.
With all of the billions he had, he spent very little on education or
health care for his country. So I guess he was a Republican. 52

The object ofLeno’s humor was of course the Republicans, but
it served the cause of further demonizing Gaddafi and thus adding
to the ‘justification 5 for America’s murderous attack on Libya.
If I had been one of Leno’s guests sitting there, I would have
turned to the audience and said: ‘Listen people, under Gaddafi
healthcare and education were completely free. Wouldn’t you like

THE MEDIA

275

to have that here?’ I think that enough people in the audience
would have applauded or shouted to force Leno to back off a bit
from his indoctrinated, made-in-America remark.

And just for the record, the $200 billion is not money found
in Gaddafi’s personal bank accounts anywhere in the world, but
money belonging to the Libyan state. But why quibble?

‘Goyim [non-Jews] were born only to serve us. Without that,
they have no place in the world; only to serve the People of Israel,’
said Rabbi Ovadia Yosef in a sermon in Israel on October 16,
2010. Rabbi Yosef is the former Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel and
the founder and spiritual leader of the Shas party, at that time one
of the three major components of the Israeli government. ‘Why
are gentiles needed?’ he continued. ‘They will work, they will
plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi [master] and eat,’
he said to some laughter.

Pretty shocking, right? Apparently not shocking enough for
the free and independent American mainstream media. Not one
daily newspaper picked it up. Not one radio or television station.
Neither did the two leading US news agencies, Associated Press
and Lhiited Press International, which usually pick up anything
at all newsworthy. And the words, of course, did not cross the
lips of any American politician or State Department official.
Rabbi Yosef’s words were reported in English only by the Jewish
Telegraph Agency, a US-based news service (October 18), and
then picked up by a few relatively obscure news agencies or
progressive websites. We can all imagine the news coverage if
someone like Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said
something like ‘Jews have no place in the world but to serve
Islam.’

On October 8, 2001, the second day of the US bombing of
Afghanistan, the transmitters for the Taliban government’s Radio
Shari were bombed, and shortly after this the US bombed some
twenty regional radio sites. US Secretary of Defense Donald

276

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

Rumsfeld defended the targeting of these facilities, saying: ‘Natu-
rally, they cannot be considered to be free media outlets. They
are mouthpieces of the Taliban and those harboring terrorists.’ I * 3

In 1999, during the US/NATO bombing of the former Yugo-
slavia, state-owned Radio Television Serbia (RTS) was targeted
because it was broadcasting reports which the United States and
NATO did not like (like how much horror the bombing was
causing). The bombs took the lives of many of the station’s staff,
and both legs of one of the survivors, which had to be amputated
to free him from the wreckage. 4 UK prime minister Tony Blair
told reporters that the bombing was ‘entirely justified,’ for the
station was ‘part of the apparatus of dictatorship and power of
Milosevic.’ 5 Threatening more such attacks on Serbian media,
Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon declared a few hours after
the bombing: ‘Stay tuned. It is not difficult to track down where
TV signals emanate from.’ 6

Accordingly, it should not be surprising if some of the leading
members of the United States mainstream media - from the New
York Times to CNN, from NPR to Fox News - were to fall victim
to a bomb, placed by someone who felt that naturally these could
not be considered to be free media outlets, but mouthpieces of
imperialism and the destructive power of the United States.

‘Omission is the most powerful form of lie’

- George Orwell

I am asked occasionally why I am so critical of the mainstream

media when I quote from them repeatedly in my writings. The

answer is simple. The American media’s gravest shortcoming is

much more their errors of omission than their errors of commis-

sion. It’s what they leave out, or seriously underemphasize, that

distorts the news more than any factual errors or out-and-out lies.
So I can make good use of the facts they report, which a large,

THE MEDIA

277

rich, and well-connected organization can provide more easily
than the alternative media.

A Pullet Surprise for the New York Times history
of the CIA ( Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner)

In 1971 the New York Times published its edition of the Pentagon
Papers, based on the government documents concerning Vietnam
policy which had been borrowed by Daniel Ellsberg. In its preface
to the book, the Times commented about certain omissions and
distortions in the government’s view of political and historical
realities as reflected in the papers:

Clandestine warfare against North Vietnam, for example, is not
seen ... as violating the Geneva Accords of 1954, which ended the
French Indochina War, or as conflicting with the public policy
pronouncements of the various administrations. Clandestine
warfare, because it is covert, does not exist as far as treaties and
public posture are concerned. Further, secret commitments to
other nations are not sensed as infringing on the treaty-making
powers of the Senate, because they are not publicly acknowledged. 7

In his 2007 book Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA , the
New York Times reporter Tim Weiner also relies heavily on govern-
ment documents in deciding what events to include and what
not to, and the result is often equally questionable. ‘This book,’
Weiner writes, ‘is on the record - no anonymous sources, no blind
quotations, no hearsay. It is the first history of the CIA compiled
entirely from firsthand reporting and primary documents.’

Thus for Tim Weiner, if US government officials did not put
something in writing or if someone did not report their firsthand
experience concerning a particular event, the event doesn’t exist,
or at least is not worth recounting. British journalist Stewart Steven
has written: ‘If we believe that contemporary history must be told
on the basis of documentary evidence before it becomes credible,

278

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

then we must also accept that everything will either be written
with the government’s seal of approval or not be written at all.’

As to firsthand reporting, for Weiner it apparently has to be
from someone ‘reputable.’ Former CIA officer Philip Agee wrote
a book in 1974, Inside the Company: CIA Diary , which provided
more detail about CIA covert operations in Latin America than any
book ever written. And it was certainly firsthand. But Agee and
his revelations are not mentioned at all in Weiner’s book. Could it
be because Agee, in the process of becoming the Agency’s leading
dissident, also became a socialist radical and close ally of Cuba?

Former CIA officer John Stockwell also penned a memoir, In
Search of Enemies (1978), revealing lots of CIA dirty laundry in
Africa. He later also became a serious Agency dissident. The
Weiner book ignores him as well.

Also ignored is a book written by Joseph Burkholder Smith,
another Agency officer, not quite a left-wing dissident like Agee or
Stockwell but a heavyweight critic nonetheless. The memoir, titled
Portrait of a Cold Warrior (1976), reveals numerous instances of
CIA illegality and immorality in the Philippines, Indonesia and
elsewhere in Asia.

There’s also Cambodian leader Prince Sihanouk, who provided
his firsthand account in My War with the CIA (1974). Sihanouk is
also a non-person in the pages of Legacy of Ashes.

Even worse, Weiner ignores a veritable mountain of impressive
‘circumstantial’ and other evidence of CIA misdeeds that do not
meet his stated criteria, which any thorough researcher or writer
on the Agency should give serious attention to, or certainly at
least mention for the record. Among the many CIA transgressions
and crimes left out of Legacy of Ashes, or very significantly played
down, are:

• The extensive CIA role in the 1950s’ provocation and sabo-
tage activities in East Berlin/East Germany which contributed

THE MEDIA

279

considerably to the communists’ decision to build the Berlin
Wall is not mentioned; although the wall is discussed.

• The US role in instigating and supporting the coup that over-
threw Sihanouk in 1970, which led directly to the rising up
of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, and the infamous Cambodian
‘killing fields.’ Weiner, without providing any source, writes:
‘The coup shocked the CIA and the rest of the American
government’ (p. 304). Neither does the book make any mention
of the deliberate Washington policy to support Pol Pot in his
subsequent war with Vietnam. Pol Pot’s name does not appear
in the book.

• The criminal actions carried out by Operation Gladio, created
by the CIA, NATO, and several European intelligence services
beginning in 1949. The operation was responsible for numer-
ous acts of terrorism in Europe, foremost of which was the
bombing of the Bologna railway station in 1980, claiming 86
lives. The purpose of the terrorism was to place the blame for
these atrocities on the left and thus heighten public concern
about a Soviet invasion and keep the left from electoral victory
in Italy, France, and elsewhere. In Weiner’s book this is all
down the Orwellian memory hole.

• A discussion of the alleged 1993 assassination attempt against
former president George H.W. Bush in Kuwait presents laugh-
able evidence, yet states: ‘But the CIA eventually concluded
that Saddam Hussein had tried to kill President Bush’ (p. 444).
Weiner repeats this, apparently, solely because it appears in a
CIA memorandum. That qualifies it as a ‘primary document.’
But what does this have to do with, y’know, the actual facts?

Moreover, the book scarcely scratches the surface concerning
the dozens of foreign elections the CIA has seriously interfered
in; the large number of assassination attempts, successful or
unsuccessful, against foreign political leaders; the widespread

28 o

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

planting of phoney stories in the international media, stories
that were at times picked up in the American press as a result;
manipulation and corruption of foreign labor movements; exten-
sive book, newspaper, and magazine publishing fronts; CIA drug
trafficking; and a virtual world atlas of overthrown governments,
or attempts at same.

A Legacy of Ashes is generally a good read, even for someone
familiar with the world of the CIA, but it’s actually often rather
superficial, albeit that it is 700 pages long. Why has so much of
importance and interest been omitted from a book which has the
subtitle The History of the CIA , not, it must be noted, A History
of the CIA ?

Whatever jaundiced eye Weiner focuses on the CIA, he still
implicitly accepts the two basic myths of the Cold War: (1) There
existed out there something called the ‘International Communist
Conspiracy,’ fueled by implacable Soviet expansionism; (2) United
States foreign policy meant well. It may have been frequently bum-
bling and ineffective, but its intentions were noble, and still are.

The Pentagon tells the media the full and shocking truth
for once

Arthur Sylvester, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs,
was the man most responsible for ‘giving, controlling, and manag-
ing the war news from Vietnam.’ One day in July 1965 Sylvester
told American journalists that they had a patriotic duty to dis-
seminate only information that made the United States look good.
When one of the newsmen exclaimed: ‘Surely, Arthur, you don’t
expect the American press to be handmaidens of government,’
Sylvester replied: ‘That’s exactly what I expect,’ adding ‘Look,
if you think any American official is going to tell you the truth,
then you’re stupid. Did you hear that? - stupid.’ And when a
correspondent for a New York paper began a question, he was

THE MEDIA

28l

interrupted by Sylvester, who said: ‘Aw, come on. What does
someone in New York care about the war in Vietnam?’ 8

How I spent the fifteen minutes of fame granted me
by Osama bin Laden

On January 19, 2006 an audiotape from Osama bin Laden was
released in which he declared: ‘If you [Americans] are sincere in
your desire for peace and security, we have answered you. And
if Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it
would be useful for you to read the book Rogue State , which states
in its introduction. . .’ He then goes on to quote the opening of a
paragraph I wrote (which actually appears only in the Foreword
of the Zed Books edition that was later translated into Arabic),
which in full reads:

If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the
United States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize

- very publicly and very sincerely - to all the widows and the
orphans, the impoverished and the tortured, and all the many
millions of other victims of American imperialism. I would then
announce that America’s global interventions - including the
awful bombings - have come to an end. And I would inform Israel
that it is no longer the 51st state of the union but - oddly enough

- a foreign country. I would then reduce the military budget by at
least 90% and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims.
There would be more than enough money. One year’s military
budget of $330 billion is equal to more than $18,000 an hour for
every hour since Jesus Christ was born. That’s what I’d do on
my first three days in the White House. On the fourth day, I’d be
assassinated.

Within hours I was swamped by the media and I appeared
on many of the leading television news shows, dozens of radio
programs, with long profiles in the Washington Post , Salon.com,
and elsewhere. In the previous ten years the Post had declined

282

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

to print a single one of my letters, most of which had pointed
out errors in their foreign news coverage. Now my photo was on
page one.

Much of the media wanted me to say that I was repulsed by
bin Laden’s ‘endorsement.’ I did not say I was repulsed, because
I was not. After the first day or so of interviews I got my reply
together and it usually went something like this :

There are two elements involved here. On the one hand, I totally
despise any kind of religious fundamentalism and the societies
spawned by such, like the Taliban in Afghanistan. On the other
hand, I’m a member of a movement which has the very ambitious
goal of slowing down, if not stopping, the American Empire, to
keep it from continuing to go round the world doing things like
bombings, invasions, overthrowing governments, and torture. To
have any success, we need to reach the American people with our
message. And to reach the American people we need to have access
to the mass media. What has just happened has given me the
opportunity to reach millions of people I would otherwise never
reach. Why should I not be glad about that? How could I let such
an opportunity go to waste?

Celebrity - modern civilization’s highest cultural achievement - is
a peculiar phenomenon. It really isn’t worth anything unless you
do something with it.

The callers into the programs I was on, and sometimes the
host, in addition to numerous emails, repeated two main argu-
ments against me:

(1) Where else but in the United States could I have the freedom
to say what I was saying on national media?

Besides their profound ignorance in not knowing of scores of
countries with at least equal freedom of speech (particularly since
September 11), what they were saying in effect was that I should
be so grateful for my freedom of speech that I should show my
gratitude by not exercising that freedom. If they were not saying
that, they were not saying anything.

THE MEDIA

283

(2) America has always done marvelous things for the world,
from the Marshall Plan and defeating Communism and the
Taliban to rebuilding destroyed countries and freeing Iraq.

I had dealt with these myths and misconceptions in various
writings; like sub-atomic particles, they behave differently
when observed. For example, I had pointed out in detail that
‘destroyed countries’ had usually been destroyed by American
bombs; and America typically did not rebuild them. As to the
Taliban, the United States had overthrown a secular, women’s-
rights-supporting government in Afghanistan, which led to the
Taliban coming to power; so the US could hardly be honored for
ousting the Taliban a decade later, replacing it with an American
occupation, an American puppet president, assorted warlords,
and women chained.

But try to explain all these fine points in the minute or so
one has for an answer on radio or television. However, I think I
managed to squeeze in a lot of information and thoughts new to
the American psyche.

Some hosts and many callers were clearly pained to hear me say
that anti-American terrorists are retaliating against the harm done
to their countries by US foreign policy, and are not necessarily
just evil, mindless, madmen from another planet. Many of them
assumed, with lots of certainty and no good reason at all, that
I was a supporter of the Democratic Party and they proceeded
to attack Bill Clinton. When I pointed out that I was no fan at
all of the Democrats or Clinton, they were usually confused into
silence for a few moments before jumping to some other piece
of nonsense. They did not know that an entire alternative world
exists above and beyond the Republicans and the Democrats.

In the news around this time we had been hearing and reading
comments in the American media about how hopelessly back-
ward and violent were those Muslims in Denmark protesting the
Danish cartoons which had depicted Muhammad, with protestors

284

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

carrying signs calling for the beheading of those who insult Islam.
It’s not quite as bad in America, but a caller to a radio program I
was on said I ‘should be taken care of,’ and one of the hundreds of
nasty emails I received began ‘Death to you and your family.’

One of my personal favorite moments was on an AM radio
program in Pennsylvania, discussing the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict:

host (with anguish in her voice): ‘What has Israel ever done to the

Palestinians?’

me: ‘Have you been in a coma the past twenty years?’

This is a question I could have asked many of those who inter-
rogated me during the previous two weeks. Actually, sixty years
would have been more appropriate when it comes to US foreign
policy.

BARACK OBAMA

Obama and the empire - the 2008 campaign:
the warning signs were all there (August 5, 2008)

The New Yorker magazine in its July 14, 2008 issue ran a cover
cartoon that achieved instant fame. It showed Barack Obama
wearing Muslim garb in the Oval Office with a portrait of Osama
bin Laden on the wall. Obama is delivering a fist bump to his
wife, Michelle, who has an Afro hairdo and an assault rifle slung
over her shoulder. An American flag lies burning in the fireplace.
The magazine says it’s all satire, a parody of the crazy right-
wing fears, rumors, and scare tactics about Obama’s past and
ideology.

The cartoon is making fun of the idea that Barack and Michelle
Obama are some kind of mixture of Black Panther, Islamist jihad-
ist, and Marxist revolutionary. But how much more educational
for the American public and the world it would be to make fun
of the idea that Obama is even some kind of progressive.

I’m more concerned here with foreign policy than domestic
issues because it’s in this area that the US government can do, and
indeed does do, the most harm to the world, to put it mildly. And
in this area what do we find? We find Obama threatening, several
times, to attack Iran if it doesn’t do what the United States wants it

286

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

to do nuclear-wise; threatening more than once to attack Pakistan
if its anti-terrorist policies are not tough enough or if there was
a regime change in the nuclear-armed country not to his liking;
calling for a large increase in US troops and tougher policies
for Afghanistan; wholly and unequivocally embracing Israel as
if it were the fifty-first state; totally ignoring Hamas, an elected
Palestinian ruling party in the occupied territory; decrying the
Berlin Wall in his recent talk in that city, about the safest thing
a politician can do, but with no mention of the Israeli Wall while
in Israel, nor the numerous American-built walls in Baghdad
(designed to keep people in or out) while in Iraq; referring to
the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chavez as ‘authoritarian’
(Would he refer similarly to the Bush government for which the
term, or even ‘police state,’ is more appropriate?); talking with
the usual disinformation and hostility about Cuba, albeit with a
minimal token reform re visits and remittances. (Would he dare
mention the outrageous case of the imprisoned Cuban Five 1 in
his frequent references to fighting terrorism?)

While an Illinois state senator in January 2004, Obama declared
that it was time ‘to end the embargo with Cuba’ because it had
‘utterly failed in the effort to overthrow Castro.’ But speaking as a
presidential candidate to a Cuban-Anrerican audience in Miami in
August 2007, he declared that he would not ‘take off the embargo’
as president because it is ‘an important inducement for change.’ 2
He thus went from a good policy for the wrong reason to the
wrong policy for the wrong reason. Does Mr Obama care any
more than Mr Bush that the United Nations General Assembly
has voted - virtually unanimously - sixteen years in a row against
the embargo?

In summary, it would be difficult to name a single ODE (of-
ficially designated enemy) that Obama has not been critical of,
or to name one that he has supported in any way. Can this be
mere coincidence?

BARACK OBAMA

287

The fact that Obama says he’s willing to ‘talk’ to some of the
‘enemies’ more than the Bush administration has done sounds
good, but one doesn’t have to be too cynical to believe that it will
not amount to more than a public-relations gimmick. It’s only a
change of policy that counts. Why doesn’t he simply and clearly
state that he would not attack Iran unless Iran first attacked the
US or Israel or anyone else?

As to Iraq, if you’re sick to the core of your being about the
horrors US policy brings down upon the heads of the people of
that unhappy land, then you must support withdrawal - immedi-
ate, total, all troops, combat and non-combat, all the Blackwater-
type killer contractors, not moved to Kuwait or Qatar to be on
call. All bases out. No permanent bases. No permanent war.
No timetables. No approval by the US military necessary. No
reductions in forces. Just out. All. Just as the people of Iraq want.
Nothing less will give them the opportunity to try to put an end
to the civil war and violence instigated by the American invasion
and occupation and to re-create their failed state.

Has Obama ever said that the war is categorically illegal and
immoral? A war crime? Or that anti-American terrorism in the
world is the direct result of oppressive US policies? Instead he
tells us: ‘To ensure prosperity here at home and peace abroad, we
all share the belief we have to maintain the strongest military on
the planet .’ 3 Why of course! All Americans rejoice in the strongest
military on the planet and a veritable overflowing of prosperity at
home and near heavenly peace abroad. That’s what the people of
the United States and the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and the
rest of the people in this sad world desperately desire and need
- greater' American killing power! State of the art !

And has Obama ever dared to raise the obvious question: why
would Iran, even if nuclear-armed, be a threat to the US or Israel?
Any more than Iraq was such a threat. Which was zero. Instead,
he has said things like ‘Iran continues to be a major threat’ and

288

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

repeats the tiresome lie that the Iranian president called for the
destruction of Israel. 4

Obama, one observer has noted, ‘opposes the present US
policy in Iraq not on the basis of any principled opposition to
neo-colonialism or aggressive war, but rather on the grounds
that the Iraq war is a mistaken deployment of power that
fails to advance the global strategic interests of American
imperialism.’ 5

Obama and his supporters have made much of the speech
he delivered in the Illinois state legislature in 2002 against the
upcoming US invasion of Iraq. But two years later, when he was
running for the US Senate, he declared: ‘There’s not that much
difference between my position and George Bush’s position at
this stage.’ 6 Since taking office in January 2005, he has voted to
approve almost every war appropriation the Republicans have put
forward. He also voted to confirm Condoleezza Rice as secretary
of state despite her complicity in the Bush administration’s false
justifications for going to war in Iraq. In doing so, he lacked the
courage of twelve of his Democratic Party Senate colleagues who
voted against her confirmation.

If you’re one of those who would like to believe that Obama has
to present moderate foreign policy views to be elected, but once
he’s in the White House we can forget that he lied to us repeat-
edly and the true, progressive man of peace and international law
and human rights will emerge, keep in mind that as a US Senate
candidate in 2004 he threatened missile strikes against Iran, 7 and
winning that election apparently did not put him in touch with
his inner peacenik.

When, in 2005, the other Illinois Senator, Dick Durbin, stuck
his neck out and compared American torture at Guantanamo to
‘Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime - Pol Pot or
others - that had no concern for human beings,’ and was angrily
denounced by the right wing, Obama stood up in the Senate

BARACK OBAMA

289

and... defended him? No, he joined the critics, thrice calling
Durbin’s remark a ‘mistake.’ 8

One of Obama’s chief foreign policy advisers is Zbigniew
Brzezinski, a man instrumental in provoking Soviet interven-
tion in Afghanistan in 1979, which was followed by massive US
military supplies to the opposition and widespread war. This gave
rise to a generation of Islamic jihadists, the Taliban, Osama bin
Laden, al-Qaeda, and more than two decades of anti-American
terrorism. Asked later if he had any regrets about this policy,
Brzezinski replied: ‘Regret what? That secret operation was an
excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into
the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the
Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter,
in substance: we now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR
its Vietnam war.’ 9

Another prominent Obama adviser - from a list entirely and
depressingly establishment-imperial - is Madeleine Albright, who
played key roles in the merciless bombings of Iraq and Yugoslavia
in the 1990s.

In a primary campaign talk in March, Obama said that ‘he
would return the country to the more “traditional” foreign policy
efforts of past presidents, such as George H.W. Bush, John F.
Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.’ 10 ‘Traditional’ indeed; they were
all serial interventionists.

Why have well-known media conservatives like George Will,
David Brooks, Joe Scarborough, and others spoken so favorably
about Obama’s candidacy? 11 Whatever else, they know he’s not
a threat to their most cherished views and values.

Given all this, can we expect a more enlightened, less bloody,
more progressive and humane foreign policy from Mr Barack
Obama? Forget the alleged eloquence and charm; forget the
warm feel-good stuff; forget the interminable cliches and plati-
tudes about hope, change, unity, and America’s indispensable

290

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

role as world leader; forget all the religiobabble ; forget John
McCain and George W. Bush ... All that counts is putting an
end to the horror - the bombings, the invasions, the killings,
the destruction, the overthrows, the occupations, the torture,
the American Empire.

A 1 Gore and John Kerry both took the progressive vote for
granted. They themselves had never been particularly progres-
sive. Each harbored a measure of disdain for the left. Both paid a
heavy price for the neglect. I and millions like me voted for Ralph
Nader, or some other third-party candidate, or stayed home.
Obama is doing the same as Gore and Kerry. Progressives should
let him know that his positions are not acceptable, keeping up
the anti-war pressure on him and the Democratic Party at every
opportunity. For whatever good it just might do.

I’m afraid that if Barack Obama becomes president he’s going
to break a lot of young hearts. And some older ones as well.

What does this man named Barack Obama truly believe in?

(October 1, 2010)

For many years I have not paid a great deal of attention to party
politics in the United States. I usually have only a passing knowl-
edge of who’s who in Congress. It’s policies that interest me
much more than politicians. But during the 2008 presidential
campaign I kept hearing the name Barack Obama when I turned
on the radio, and repeatedly saw his name in headlines in various
newspapers. I knew no more than that he was a senator from
Illinois and... was he black?

Then one day I turned on my kitchen radio and was informed
that Obama was about to begin a talk. I decided to listen, and
did so for about fifteen or twenty minutes while I washed the
dishes. I listened, and listened, and then it hit me... This man
is not saying anything! It’s all platitude and cliche, with very

BARACK OBAMA

291

little of what I would call substance. His talk could have been
written by a computer, touching all the appropriate bases and
saying just what could be expected to give some hope to the
pessimistic and to artfully challenge the skepticism of the cynical;
feel-good language for every occasion; conventional wisdom for
every issue. His supporters, I would later learn, insisted that he
had to talk this way to be elected, but once elected - Aha! The
real genuine-progressive, anti-war Barack Obama would appear.
‘Change you can believe in!’ Hallelujah!... They’re still saying
things like that.

Last week Obama gave the traditional annual speech at the
opening of the United Nations General Assembly . 12 To give you an
idea of whether the man now sincerely expresses himself ‘outside
the box’ at all, here’s what he had to say about Pakistan: ‘Since
the rains came and the floodwaters rose in Pakistan, we have
pledged our assistance, and we should all support the Pakistani
people as they recover and rebuild.’ Does he think no one in the
world knows that airplanes of the United States of America have
flown over Pakistan and dropped bombs on dozens of recent
occasions? Did he think he was speaking before sophisticated
international diplomats or making a campaign speech before
Iowa farmers?

Plus endless verbiage about the endless Israeli-Palestine issue,
which could have been lifted out of almost any speech by any
American president of the past thirty years. But no mention at all
of Gaza. Oh, excuse me - there was one line: ‘the young girl in
Gaza who wants to have no ceiling on her dreams.’ Gosh, choke.
One would never know that the United States possesses huge
leverage over the state of Israel - billions/trillions of dollars of
military and economic aid and gifts. An American president with a
minimum of courage could force Israel to make some concessions,
and in a struggle between a thousand-pound gorilla (Israel) and an
infant (Hamas) it’s the gorilla that has to give some ground.

292

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

And this: ‘We also know from experience that those who
defend these [universal] values for their people have been our
closest friends and allies, while those who have denied those rights
- whether terrorist groups or tyrannical governments - have chosen
to be our adversaries.’ In fact, however, it would be difficult to
name a single brutal dictatorship of the second half of the twentieth
century that was not supported by the United States; not only
supported, but often put into power and kept in power against the
wishes of the population. And in recent years as well Washington
has supported very repressive governments, such as Saudi Arabia,
Honduras, Indonesia, Egypt, Kosovo, Colombia, and Israel. As to
terrorist groups being adversaries of the United States - another
item for the future Barack Obama Presidential Liebrary, the United
States has supported terrorist groups for decades. These groups
have fought alongside the United States in Afghanistan, Bosnia,
and Kosovo [added in 2012: and in Libya and Syria.]

Yes, of course it’s nice to have a president who speaks in complete

sentences. But that they’re coherent doesn’t make them honest.

(John R. MacArthur, publisher of Harper’s magazine 13 )

Obama’s popularity around the world is enhanced to an im-
portant extent by the fact that he has successfully concealed or
obscured his real ideology (assuming he has one, which is to
be doubted). As an example, in an interview with the New York
Times (March 7, 2009), he was asked: ‘Is there a one word name
for your philosophy? If you’re not a socialist, are you a liberal?
Are you progressive? One word?’

‘No, I’m not going to engage in that,’ replied the president.

Obama, his mother, and the CIA

In his autobiography, Dreams from My Father , Barack Obama
writes of taking a job at some point after graduating from Columbia
University in 1983. He describes his employer as ‘a consulting

BARACK OBAMA

293

house to multinational corporations’ in New York City, and his
functions as a ‘research assistant’ and ‘financial writer.’

Oddly, Obama doesn’t mention the name of his employer.
However, a New York Times story of 2007 identifies the company
as Business International Corporation. 14 Equally odd is that the
Times did not remind its readers that the newspaper itself had
disclosed in 1977 that Business International had provided cover
for four CIA employees in various countries between 1955 and
i960. 15

The British journal Lobster - which, despite its incongruous
name, is a venerable international publication on intelligence
matters - has reported that Business International was active
in the 1980s promoting the candidacy of Washington-favored
candidates in Australia and Fiji. 16 In 1987, the CIA overthrew the
Fiji government after but one month in office because of its policy
of maintaining the island as a nuclear-free zone, meaning that
American nuclear-powered or nuclear-weapons-carrying ships
could not make port calls. 17 After the Fiji coup, the candidate sup-
ported by Business International, who was much more amenable
to Washington’s nuclear desires, was reinstated to power - R.S.K.
Mara was prime minister or president of Fiji from 1970 to 2000,
except for the one-month break in 1987.

In his book, Obama not only doesn’t mention his employer’s
name; he fails to say exactly when he worked there, or why he
left the job. There may well be no significance to these omissions,
but inasmuch as Business International has a long association
with the world of intelligence, covert actions, and attempts to
penetrate the radical left - including Students for a Democratic
Society (SDS) 18 - it’s reasonable to wonder if the inscrutable Mr
Obama is concealing something about his own association with
this world.

Adding to the wonder is the fact that his mother, Ann Dunham,
had been associated during the 1970s and 80s - as employee,

294

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

consultant, grantee, or student - with at least five organizations
with intimate CIA connections during the Cold War: the Ford
Foundation, the Agency for International Development (AID),
the Asia Foundation, Development Alternatives, Inc., and the
East-West Center of Hawaii. 19 Much of this time she worked as an
anthropologist in Indonesia and Hawaii, being in a good position
to gather intelligence about local communities.

As examples of the CIA connections of these organizations,
consider the disclosure by John Gilligan, director of AID during
the Carter administration (1977-81): ‘At one time, many AID field
offices were infiltrated from top to bottom with CIA people.’
‘The idea was to plant operatives in every kind of activity we
had overseas, government, volunteer, religious, every kind.’ 20
And Development Alternatives, Inc. is the organization for whom
Alan Gross was working when arrested in Cuba and charged with
being part of the ongoing American operation to destabilize the
Cuban government.

Love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal
(Thank you, Phil Ochs. We miss you)

Angela Davis, star of the 1960s, like most members of the Com-
munist Party, was/is no more radical than the average American
liberal. Here she is addressing Occupy Wall Street in January
2012: ‘When I said that we need a third party, a radical party, I
was projecting toward the future. We cannot allow a Republican
to take office... Don’t we remember what it was like when Bush
was president?’ 21

Yes, Angela, we remember that time well. How can we forget
it since Bush, by all important standards, is still in the White
House? Waging perpetual war, relentless surveillance of the
citizenry, kissing the corporate ass, police brutality?... What’s
changed? Except for the worse. Where’s our single-payer national
health insurance? Nothing even close. Where’s our affordable

BARACK OBAMA

295

university education? Still the most backward in the ‘developed’
world. Where’s our legalized marijuana - 1 mean really legalized?
If you think that’s changed, you must be stoned. Where’s our
abortion on demand? What does your guy Barack think about
that? Are the indispensable labor unions being rescued from
oblivion? Ha! The ultra-important minimum wage? Inflation
adjusted, it’s equal to that in the mid-1950s.

Has the American threat to the environment and the world
environmental movement ceased? Tell that to a dedicated activist-
internationalist. Has the fifty-year-old embargo against Cuba finally
ended? It has not, and I can still not go there legally. The police-
state War on Terror at home? Scarcely a month goes by without the
FBI entrapping some young ‘terrorists.’ Are any banksters and Wall
Street society-screwers (except for the harmless insider traders)
being imprisoned? Name one. The really tough regulations of the
financial area so badly needed? Keep waiting. How about execu-
tives of the BP oil spill company being arrested? Or war criminals,
mass murderers, and torturers with names like. . . Oh, I don’t know,
let’s see. . . maybe like Cheney or Bush or Rumsfeld or Wolfowitz or
Rice? All walking completely free, all celebrated.

‘A major decline of progressive America occurred during the
Clinton years as many liberals and their organizations accepted
the presence of a Democratic president as an adequate substitute
for the things liberals once believed in. Liberalism and a social
democratic spirit painfully grown over the previous 60 years
withered during the Clinton administration’ (Sam Smith) 22

‘A change of Presidents is like a change of advertising cam-
paigns for a soft drink; the product itself still tastes the same,
but it now has a new “image”’ (Richard K. Moore).

296

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

Barack ‘I’d kill for the peace prize’ Obama (March 28, 2011)

Is anyone keeping count? I am. Libya makes six. Six countries
that Barack H. Obama has waged war against in his twenty-six
months in office. (To anyone who disputes that dropping bombs
on a populated land is an act of war, I would ask what they think
of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.)

America’s first black president has now waged war in Africa.
Is there anyone left who still thinks that Barack Obama is some
kind of improvement over George W. Bush?

Probably two types still think so: (1) those to whom color
matters a lot; (2) those who are very impressed by the ability to
put together grammatically correct sentences.

It certainly can’t have much otherwise to do with intellect or
intelligence. Obama has said numerous things which if uttered
by Bush would have inspired lots of rolled eyeballs, snickers, and
chuckling reports in the columns and broadcasts of mainstream
media. Like the one the president has repeated on a number of
occasions when pressed to investigate Bush and Cheney for war
crimes, along the lines of ‘I prefer to look forward rather than
backwards.’ Picture a defendant before a judge asking to be found
innocent on such grounds. It simply makes laws, law enforcement,
crime, justice, and facts irrelevant. By Obama’s stated standard no
one would ever be found guilty of any crime because the crimes
would all be in the past.

There’s also the excuse given by Obama not to prosecute those
engaged in torture: because they were following orders. Has this
‘educated’ man never heard of the Nuremberg Trials, where this
defense was summarily rejected? Forever, it was assumed.

Just eighteen days before the Gulf oil spill Obama said: ‘It
turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause
spills. They are technologically very advanced.’ 23 Picture George
W. having said this, and the later reaction.

BARACK OBAMA

297

‘All the forces that we’re seeing at work in Egypt are forces
that naturally should be aligned with us, should be aligned with
Israel,’ Obama said in early March . 24 Imagine if Bush had implied
this - that the Arab protesters in Egypt against a man receiving
billions in US aid, as well as the tools to repress and torture
them, should ‘naturally’ be aligned with the United States and
- God help us - Israel.

A week later, on March to, State Department spokesman P.J.
Crowley told a forum in Cambridge, Massachusetts that WikiLeaks
hero Bradley Manning’s treatment by the Defense Department in
a Marine prison was ‘ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid.’
The next day our ‘brainy’ president was asked about Crowley’s
comment. Replied the Great Black Hope: ‘I have actually asked
the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken
in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our
basic standards. They assure me that they are.’

Right, George. I mean Barack. Bush should have asked Donald
Rumsfeld whether anyone in US custody was being tortured
anywhere in the world. He could then have held a news confer-
ence like Obama did to announce the happy news - ‘No torture
by America!’ We would still be chortling at that one.

Obama closed his remarks with: ‘I can’t go into details about
some of their concerns, but some of this has to do with Pvt.
Manning’s safety as well .’ 25 Ah yes, of course, Manning is being
tortured for his own good. Someone please remind me: did
George ever stoop to using that particular absurdity to excuse
prisoner hell at Guantanamo?

Is it that Barack Obama is not bothered by the insult to Bradley
Manning’s human rights, the daily wearing away of this brave
young man’s mental stability? The answer to the question is No.
The president is not bothered by these things. How do I know?
Because Barack Obama is not bothered by anything as long as
he can exult in being the president of the United States, eat his

298

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

hamburgers, and play his basketball. The problem is that the
man doesn’t really believe strongly in anything, certainly not
in controversial areas. He learned a long time ago how to take
positions that avoid controversy, how to express opinions without
clearly taking sides, how to talk eloquently without actually saying
anything, how to leave his listeners’ heads filled with stirring
cliches, platitudes, and slogans. And it worked. Oh how it worked!
What could happen now, having reached the presidency of the
United States, to induce him to change his style?

Remember that in his own book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama
wrote: ‘I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly differ-
ent political stripes project their own views.’ Obama is a product
of marketing. He is the prime example of the product ‘As seen
on TV.’

Sam Smith has written that Obama is the most conservative
Democratic president we’ve ever had. ‘In an earlier time, there
would have been a name for him: Republican.’ Indeed, if John
McCain had won the 2008 election, and then done everything
that Obama has done in exactly the same way, liberals would be
raging about such awful policies.

I believe that Barack Obama is one of the worst things that
has ever happened to the American left. The millions of young
people who jubilantly supported him in 2008, and numerous
older supporters, will need a long recovery period before they’re
ready to once again offer their idealism and their passion on the
altar of political activism.

If you don’t like how things have turned out, next time find out
exactly what your candidate means when he talks of ‘change.’

BARACK OBAMA

299

Team Obama/cult Obama: his 2009 Cairo speech

The praise heaped on President Obama for his speech to the
Muslim world by writers on the left, both here and abroad, is
disturbing. I’m referring to people who I think should know
better, who’ve taken Politics 101 and can easily see the many
hypocrisies in Obama’s talk, as well as the distortions, omissions,
and contradictions, the true but irrelevant observations, the false-
hoods, the optimistic words without any matching action, the
insensitivities to victims. Yet, these commentators are impressed,
in many cases very impressed. In the world at large, this frame
of mind borders on a cult.

In such cases one must look beyond the intellect and examine
the emotional appeal. We all know the world is in big trouble
The Three Great Problems are: (1) incessant war and violence;

(2) financial crises provoking widespread economic suffering;

(3) environmental degradation bordering on catastrophe. In all
three areas the United States bears more culpability than any
other single country. Who better to satisfy humankind’s craving
for relief than a new American president who makes it a point to
convince you that he understands the problems, who admits, to
one degree or another, his country’s responsibility for them; and
who ‘eloquently’ expresses his desire and determination to change
American policies and embolden the rest of the world to follow
his inspiring example? Is it any wonder that it’s 1964, the Beatles
have just arrived in New York, and everyone is a teenage girl?

I could go through the Cairo speech and point out line by line
all the political and moral shortcomings, the plain nonsense, and
the rest. (‘I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by
the United States.’ No mention of it being outsourced to various
countries, likely including the very country in which he was
speaking. ‘No single nation should pick and choose which nation

3oo

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

holds nuclear weapons.’ But this is precisely what the United
States is trying to do concerning Iran and North Korea.)

The problem is that of well-educated people, as well as the
not-so-well-educated, being so moved by a career politician saying
‘all the right things’ to give food for hope to billions starving for
it, and swallowing it all as if they had been born yesterday. I’d
like to take them back to another charismatic figure, Adolf Hitler,
speaking to the German people two years and four months after
becoming chancellor, addressing a Germany still reeling with
humiliation from its being the defeated nation in the world war,
with huge losses of its young men; a country still being punished
by the world for its militarism, suffering mass unemployment and
other effects of the Great Depression. Here are excerpts from the
speech of May 21, 1935. Imagine how it fed the hungry German
people...

I conceive it my duty to be perfectly frank and open in addressing
the nation. I frequently hear from Anglo-Saxon tribes expressions
of regret that Germany has departed from those principles of
democracy, which in those countries are held particularly sacred.
This opinion is entirely erroneous. Germany, too, has a democratic
constitution.

Our love of peace perhaps is greater than in the case of others,
for we have suffered most from war. None of us wants to threaten
anybody, but we all are determined to obtain the security and
equality of our people.

The world war should be a cry of warning here. Not for a
second time can Europe survive such a catastrophe.

Germany has solemnly guaranteed France her present frontiers,
resigning herself to the permanent loss of Alsace-Lorraine. She
has made a treaty with Poland and we hope it will be renewed and
renewed again at every expiry of the set period.

The German Reich, especially the present German government,
has no other wish except to live on terms of peace and friendship
with all the neighboring states.

BARACK OBAMA

301

Germany has nothing to gain from a European war. What we
want is liberty and independence. Because of these intentions
of ours we are ready to negotiate non-aggression pacts with our
neighbor states.

Germany has neither the wish nor the intention to mix in
internal Austrian affairs, or to annex or to unite with Austria.

The German government is ready in principle to conclude
non-aggression pacts with its individual neighbor states and to
supplement those provisions which aim at isolating belligerents
and localizing war areas.

In limiting German air armament to parity with individual
other great nations of the West, it makes possible that at any time
the upper figure may be limited, which limit Germany will then
take as a binding obligation to keep within.

Germany is ready to participate actively in any efforts for drastic
limitation of unrestricted arming. She sees the only possible way in
a return to the principles of the old Geneva Red Cross convention.
She believes, to begin with, only in the possibility of the gradual
abolition and outlawing of fighting methods which are contrary to
this convention, such as dum-dum bullets and other missiles which
are a deadly menace to civilian women and children.

To abolish fighting places, but to leave the question of bombard-
ment open, seems to us wrong and ineffective. But we believe it is
possible to ban certain arms as contrary to international law and
to outlaw those who use them. But this, too, can only be done
gradually. Therefore, gas and incendiary and explosive bombs
outside of the battle area can be banned and the ban extended
later to all bombing. As long as bombing is free, a limitation of
bombing planes is a doubtful proposition. But as soon as bomb-
ing is branded as barbarism, the building of bombing planes will
automatically cease.

Just as the Red Cross stopped the killing of wounded and
prisoners, it should be possible to stop the bombing of civilians.

In the adoption of such principles, Germany sees a better means of
pacification and security for peoples than in all the assistance pacts
and military conventions.

The German government is ready to agree to every limita-
tion leading to abandonment of the heaviest weapons which are

302

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

especially suitable for aggression. These comprise, first, the
heaviest artillery and heaviest tanks.

Germany declares herself ready to agree to the delimitation
of caliber of artillery and guns on dreadnoughts, cruisers and
torpedo boats. Similarly, the German government is ready to adopt
any limitation on naval tonnage, and finally to agree to the limita-
tion of tonnage of submarines or even to their abolition, provided
other countries do likewise.

The German government is of the opinion that all attempts
effectively to lessen tension between individual states through
international agreements or agreements between several states are
doomed to failure unless suitable measures are taken to prevent
poisoning of public opinion on the part of irresponsible individu-
als in speech, writing, in the film and the theatre.

The German government is ready any time to agree to an
international agreement which will effectively prevent and make
impossible all attempts to interfere from the outside in affairs of
other states. The term ‘interference’ should be internationally
defined.

If people wish for peace it must be possible for governments
to maintain it. We believe the restoration of the German defense
force will contribute to this peace because of the simple fact that
its existence removes a dangerous vacuum in Europe. We believe if
the peoples of the world could agree to destroy all their gas and in-
flammable and explosive bombs this would be cheaper than using
them to destroy one another. In saying this I am not speaking any
longer as the representative of a defenseless state which could reap
only advantages and no obligations from such action from others.

I cannot better conclude my speech to you, my fellow-figures
and trustees of the nation, than by repeating our confession of faith
in peace: whoever lights the torch of war in Europe can wish for
nothing but chaos. We, however, live in the firm conviction our
times will see not the decline but the renaissance of the West. It is
our proud hope and our unshakable belief that Germany can make
an imperishable contribution to this great work. 26

How many people in the world, including numerous highly edu-
cated Germans, reading or hearing that speech in 1935, doubted

BARACK OBAMA

303

that Adolf Hitler was a sincere man of peace and an inspiring,
visionary leader for troubled times?

After his June 4 Cairo speech, President Obama was much
praised for mentioning the 1953 CIA overthrow of Iranian prime
minister Mohammad Mossadegh. But in his talk in Ghana on
July 11 he failed to mention the CIA coup that ousted Ghanian
president Kwame Nkrumah in 1966, referring to him only as a
‘giant’ among African leaders. The Mossadegh coup is definitely
one of the most well-known CIA covert actions. Obama could not
easily get away without mentioning it in a talk in the Middle East
looking to mend fences. But the Nkrumah ouster is one of the
least known; indeed, not a single print or broadcast news report
in the American mainstream media saw fit to mention it at the
time of the president’s talk. As if it never happened. 27

And the next time you hear that Africa can’t produce good
leaders, people who are committed to the welfare of the masses
of their people, think of Nkrumah and his fate. And think of
Patrice Lumumba, overthrown in the Congo 1960-61 with the
help of the United States; of Agostinho Neto of Angola, against
whom Washington waged war in the 1970s, making it impossible
for him to institute progressive changes; of Samora Machel of Mo-
zambique, against whom the CIA supported a counterrevolution
in the 197OS-80S period; and of Nelson Mandela of South Africa
(now married to Machel’s widow), who spent twenty-eight years
in prison thanks to the CIA. 28

PATRIOTISM

Some thoughts on ‘patriotism’

(July 4, 2010)

Most important thought: I’m sick and tired of this thing called
‘patriotism.’

The Japanese pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor were being
patriotic. The German people who supported Hitler and his
conquests were being patriotic, fighting for the Fatherland. All the
Latin American military dictators who overthrew democratically
elected governments and routinely tortured people were being
patriotic - saving their beloved country from ‘communism.’

General Augusto Pinochet of Chile, mass murderer and tor-
turer: ‘I would like to be remembered as a man who served his
country.’ 1

P.W. Botha, former president of apartheid South Africa: ‘I am
not going to repent. I am not going to ask for favours. What I
did, I did for my country.’ 2

As Pol Pot, mass murderer of Cambodia, lay on his death
bed in 1997, he was interviewed by a journalist, who later wrote:
‘Asked whether he wants to apologize for the suffering he caused,
he looks genuinely confused, has the interpreter repeat the ques-
tion, and answers “No”. ... “I want you to know that everything
I did, I did for my country.’” 3

PATRIOTISM

305

Tony Blair, former British prime minister, defending his role
in the murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis: ‘I did what I
thought was right for our country.’ 4

‘In these three decades I have been actuated solely by love
and loyalty to my people in all my thoughts, acts, and life’: Adolf
Hitler, ‘Last Will and Testament’, written in his bunker in his
final hours, April 29, 1945.

Fast forward now to 2036. . . George W. Bush lies dying, Fox
News Channel is in the room recording his last words:

I know that people think the whole thing... that thing in Iraq...
was a bad thing, and they hold it against me... I appreciate their
view. . . I can understand how they feel. . . But y’know, I did it for
America, and the American people, and their freedom... The more
you love freedom, the more likely it is you’ll be attacked... Saddam
was a real threat... I still think he had weapons of mass destruc-
tion... and someday we’ll find ’em... someday we’ll say ‘Mission
accomplished!’. . . that will really be a turning point! . . . So I’m
prepared to meet my maker and whatever he has in mind for me. . .
in fact I say Bring it on!

At the end of World War II, the United States gave moral
lectures to its German prisoners and to the German people on the
inadmissibility of pleading that their participation in the war and
the Holocaust was in obedience to their legitimate government.
To prove to them how legally and morally inadmissable this
defense was, the World War II allies hanged the leading examples
of such patriotic loyalty.

I was once asked after a talk: ‘Do you love America?’ I
answered: ‘No.’ After pausing for a few seconds to let that sink
in amidst several nervous giggles in the audience, I continued
with: ‘I don’t love any country. I’m a citizen of the world. I love
certain principles, like human rights, civil liberties, meaningful
democracy, an economy which puts people before profits.’

306

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

I don’t make much of a distinction between patriotism and
nationalism. Some people equate patriotism with allegiance
to one’s country and government or the noble principles they
supposedly stand for, while defining nationalism as sentiments
of ethno-national superiority. However defined, in practice the
psychological and behavioral manifestations of nationalism and
patriotism are not easily distinguishable; indeed they feed upon
each other.

Howard Zinn called nationalism

a set of beliefs taught to each generation in which the Motherland
or the Fatherland is an object of veneration and becomes a burning
cause for which one becomes willing to kill the children of other
Motherlands or Fatherlands. ... Patriotism is used to create the
illusion of a common interest that everybody in the country has . 5

Strong feelings of patriotism lie near the surface in the great major-
ity of Americans. They’re buried deeper in the more ‘liberal’ and
‘sophisticated’, but are almost always reachable, and ignitable.

Alexis de Tocqueville, the mid-nineteenth-century French
historian, commented about his long stay in the United States:
‘It is impossible to conceive a more troublesome or more gar-
rulous patriotism; it wearies even those who are disposed to
respect it .’ 6

George Bush, Sr., pardoning former defense secretary Caspar
Weinberger and five others in connection with the Iran-Contra
arms-for-hostages scandal, said: ‘First, the common denominator
of their motivation - whether their actions were right or wrong
- was patriotism .’ 7

What a primitive underbelly there is to this rational society.
The US is the most patriotic, as well as the most religious, country
of the so-called developed world. The entire American patriotism
thing may be best understood as the biggest case of mass hysteria
in history, whereby the crowd adores its own power as troopers

PATRIOTISM

307

of the world’s only superpower, a substitute for the lack of power
in the rest of their lives. Patriotism, like religion, meets people’s
need for something greater to which their individual lives can
be anchored.

So this July 4, my dear fellow Americans, some of you will raise
your fists and yell: ‘U! S! A! ... U! S! A!’ And you’ll parade with
your flags and your images of the Statue of Liberty. But do you
know that the sculptor copied his mother’s face for the statue, a
domineering and intolerant woman who had forbidden another
child to marry a Jew?

‘Patriotism,’ Dr Samuel Johnson famously said, ‘is the last
refuge of a scoundrel.’ American writer Ambrose Bierce begged
to differ: it is, he said, the first. For George Bernard Shaw ‘Pa-
triotism is the conviction that this country is superior to all other
countries because you were born in it.’

George Orwell observed:

Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits but ac-
cording to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage
- torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations,
imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing
of civilians - which does not change its moral colour when it is
committed by ‘our’ side. ... The nationalist not only does not
disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a
remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them . 8

‘Pledges of allegiance are marks of totalitarian states, not de-
mocracies,’ says David Kertzer, a Brown University anthropologist
who specializes in political rituals. ‘I can’t think of a single de-
mocracy except the United States that has a pledge of allegiance.’ 9
Or, he might have added, any that insists that its politicians
display their patriotism by wearing a flag pin. Hitler criticized
German Jews and Communists for their internationalism and
lack of national patriotism, demanding that ‘true patriots’ publicly

3°8

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

vow and display their allegiance to the fatherland. In reaction to
this, postwar Germany has made a conscious and strong effort
to minimize public displays of patriotism.

Oddly enough, the American Pledge of Allegiance was written
by Francis Bellamy, a founding member, in 1889, of the Society of
Christian Socialists, a group of Protestant ministers who asserted
that ‘the teachings of Jesus Christ lead directly to some form or
forms of socialism.’ Tell that to the next Tea Party ignoramus who
angrily accuses President Obama of being a ‘socialist.’

British writer H.G. Wells had this to say about the destructive
effects of nationalism:

Throughout the nineteenth century, and particularly throughout
its latter half, there had been a great working up of this nationalism
in the world. ... Nationalism was taught in schools, emphasized by
newspapers, preached and mocked and sung into men. It became
a monstrous cant which darkened all human affairs. Men were
brought to feel that they were as improper without a nationality as
without their clothes in a crowded assembly. Oriental peoples, who
had never heard of nationality before, took to it as they took to the
cigarettes and bowler hats of the West . 10

And the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, for his part, under-
stood very well its ideological function:

The very existence of the state demands that there be some privi-
leged class vitally interested in maintaining that existence. And it is
precisely the group interests of that class that are called patriotism . 11

American exceptionalism

The leaders of imperial powers have traditionally told themselves
and their citizens that their country was exceptional and that their
subjugation of a particular foreign land should be seen as a ‘civi-
lizing mission,’ a ‘liberation,’ ‘God’s will,’ and of course bringing
‘freedom and democracy’ to the benighted and downtrodden.

PATRIOTISM

309

It is difficult to kill large numbers of people without a claim to
virtue. I wonder if this sense of exceptionalism has been embed-
ded anywhere more deeply than in the United States, where it is
drilled into every cell and ganglion of American consciousness
from kindergarten on.

If we measure the degree of indoctrination (I’ll resist the temp-
tation to use the word ‘brainwashing’) of a population as the
gap between what the people believe about their government’s
behavior in the world and what the government’s actual behavior
has been, the American people are clearly the most indoctrinated
people on the planet. The role of the American media is of course
indispensable to this process - try naming a single American daily
newspaper or television network that was unequivocally against
the US attacks on Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Panama,
Grenada, and Vietnam. Or even against any two of them. How
about one?

Overloaded with a sense of America’s moral superiority, each
year the State Department judges the world, issuing reports
evaluating the behavior of all other nations, often accompanied
by sanctions of one kind or another. There are different reports
rating how each lesser nation has performed in the previous year
in the areas of religious freedom, human rights, the war on drugs,
trafficking in persons, and counterterrorism. The State Depart-
ment also maintains a list of international ‘terrorist’ groups. The
criteria used in these reports are mainly political, wherever ap-
plicable; Cuba, for example, is always listed as a supporter of
terrorism whereas anti-Castro exile groups in the United States,
which have committed hundreds of terrorist acts, are not listed
as terrorist groups.

The causes of the malady are not entirely clear but its recurrence
is one of the uniformities of history: power tends to confuse itself
with virtue and a great nation is peculiarly susceptible to the idea
that its power is a sign of God’s favor, conferring upon it a special

3io

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

responsibility for other nations - to make them richer and hap-
pier and wiser, to remake them, that is, in its own shining image.
(Former US senator William Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power,
1966)

We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our
time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world. ... God has
predestined, mankind expects, great things from our race; and
great things we feel in our souls. (Flerman Melville, White-Jacket ,
1850)

God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits
America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America’s Middle
Eastern policy and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is
(a) anti-Semitic, (b) anti-American, (c) with the enemy, and (d) a
terrorist. (John le Carre, The Times , London, January 15, 2003)

Neoconservatism ... traded upon the historic American myths of
innocence, exceptionalism, triumphalism and Manifest Destiny.

It offered a vision of what the United States should do with its
unrivaled global power. In its most rhetorically-seductive messianic
versions, it conflated the expansion of American power with the
dream of universal democracy. In all of this, it proclaimed that
the maximal use of American power was good for both America
and the world. (Columbia University professor Gary Dorrien, The
Christian Century magazine, January 22, 2007)

To most of its citizens, America is exceptional, and it’s only natural
that it should take exception to certain international standards.
(Michael Ignatieff, Legal Affairs, May-June, 2002)

Our country is a force for good without precedent. (Lieutenant
(Colonel Ralph Peters, US Army War College, 1997)

The US military is a force for global good that ... has no equal.
(Thomas Barnett, US Naval War College, Guardian, London,
December 27, 2005)

John Bolton, future US ambassador to the LTnited Nations,
wrote in 2000 that, because of its unique status, the United
States could not be ‘legally bound’ or constrained in any way

PATRIOTISM

311

by its international treaty obligations. The US needed to ‘be un-
ashamed, unapologetic, uncompromising American constitutional
hegemonists,’ so that their ‘senior decision makers’ could be free
to use force unilaterally.

Condoleezza Rice, future US Secretary of State, writing in
2000, was equally contemptuous of international law. She claimed
that in the pursuit of its national security the United States no
longer needed to be guided by ‘notions of international law and
norms’ or ‘institutions like the United Nations’ because it was ‘on
the right side of history’ (Z magazine , Boston MA, July/August
2004).

The president [George W. Bush] said he didn’t want other coun-
tries dictating terms or conditions for the war on terrorism. ‘At
some point, we may be the only ones left. That’s okay with me. We
are America.’ ( Washington Post, January 31, 2002)

Reinhold Niebuhr got it right a half-century ago: what persists
- and promises no end of grief - is our conviction that Providence
has summoned America to tutor all of humankind on its pilgrim-
age to perfection. (Andrew Bacevich, professor of international
relations, Boston University)

In commenting on Woodrow Wilson’s moral lecturing of his Eu-
ropean colleagues at the Versailles peace table following the First
World War, Winston Churchill remarked that he found it hard to
believe that the European emigrants, who brought to America the
virtues of the lands from which they sprang, had left behind all
their vices ( The World Crisis , Vol. V: The Aftermath, 1929)

Behold a republic, gradually but surely becoming the supreme
moral factor to the world’s progress and the accepted arbiter of the
world’s disputes. (William Jennings Bryan, US secretary of state
under Woodrow Wilson, In His Image, 1922)

U.S. allies must accept that some U.S. unilateralism is inevitable,
even desirable. This mainly involves accepting the reality of

312

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

America’s supreme might - and truthfully, appreciating how
historically lucky they are to be protected by such a relatively
benign power. (Michael Hirsch, Newsweek editor, Foreign Affairs,
November, 2002)

[The United States is] a country that exists by the grace of a divine
providence. (Colin Powell, Republican National Convention,
August 13, 1996)

The US media always has an underlying acceptance of the myth-
ology of American exceptionalism, that the US, in everything it
does, is the last best hope of humanity. (Rahul Mahajan, author of
The New Crusade: America’s War on Terrorism and Full Spectrum
Dominance)

The fundamental problem is that the Americans do not respect
anybody except themselves. They say, ‘We are the God of the
world,’ and they don’t consult us. (Col. Mir Jan, spokesman for the
Afghan Defense Ministry, Washington Post, August 3, 2002)

If we have to use force, it is because we are America! We are the
indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.
(Madeleine Albright, US secretary of state, 1998)

Sports and the Flag

2005: A television ad for Anheuser-Busch shown during the Super
Bowl. An airport, a contingent of US soldiers in uniform is passing
through, presumably on the way to or just returning from Iraq; the
people in the terminal look up one by one, and slowly realize who’s
walking by - It’s (choke) ... Can it (gasp) be? ... Yes! Heroes!
Real honest-to-God heroes! The faces of the onlookers are filled
with deep gratitude and pride. The soldiers begin to realize what’s
happening as the waves of adulation sweep over them; their faces,
bursting with gratitude and matching pride, say ‘Thanks.’ The
screen says ‘Thanks.’ Not a dry eye in the whole damn terminal.
In the Soviet Union they might have been a group of Stakhanovite
hero workers on the way to the factory.

PATRIOTISM

313

2008: The United States Tennis Open women’s final in New
York. A woman comes out to sing ‘America the Beautiful.’ Pretty
common, of course, at sporting events in beautiful America. If it’s
not that, it’s another well-known hymn to athleticism like ‘God
Bless America’ or ‘The Star Spangled Banner.’ But this time, as
she finishes singing, dozens of marines in full uniform march out
and unfurl an American flag a mile long. The crowd eats it up.
Two days later, at the men’s final, it’s the same thing plus four
jet planes roar past above the stadium.

I wish I had been there. So I could have yelled out: ‘What the
fuck does this have to do with tennis?’ Hardly anyone would
have heard me above the din of the patriotic orgy, but if anyone
did I would not be surprised if they reported me to the nearest
authorities (and in present-day America one is never too far from
authorities), and I’d be asked to accompany the authorities to the
security office (and in present-day America one is never too far
from a security office).

Norman Mailer wrote in 2003, a few weeks before the US
invasion of Iraq:

My guess is that, like it or not, or want it or not, we are going to
go to war because that is the only solution Bush and his people
can see. The dire prospect that opens, therefore, is that America is
going to become a mega-banana republic where the army will have
more and more importance in our lives. . . . And before it is all over,
democracy, noble and delicate as it is, may give way. ... Indeed,
democracy is the special condition ... we will be called upon to
defend in the coming years. That will be enormously difficult
because the combination of the corporation, the military and the
complete investiture of the flag with mass spectator sports has set
up a pre-fascistic atmosphere in America already. 12

DISSENT AND RESISTANCE
IN AMERICA

The crime of making Americans aware of their own history

(October 4, 2011)

Is history getting too close for comfort for the fragile little Ameri-
can heart and mind? Their schools and their favorite media have
done an excellent job of keeping them ignorant of what their
favorite country has done to the rest of the world, but lately some
discomforting points of view have managed to find their way into
this well-defended American consciousness.

First, Congressman Ron Paul during a presidential debate last
month expressed the belief that those who carried out the Sep-
tember 11 attack were retaliating for the many abuses perpetrated
against Arab countries by the United States over the years. The
audience booed him, loudly.

Then, popular-song icon Tony Bennett, in a radio interview,
said the United States caused the 9/11 attacks because of its
actions in the Persian Gulf, adding that President George W.
Bush had told him in 2005 that the Iraq War was a mistake.
Bennett of course came under some nasty fire; so much so that
he felt obliged to post a statement on Facebook saying that his
experience in World War II had taught him that ‘war is the
lowest form of human behavior.’ He said there’s no excuse for

DISSENT AND RESISTANCE

315

terrorism, and he added, ‘I’m sorry if my statements suggested
anything other than an expression of love for my country’ (NBC
September 21). Fox News, discussing Bennett, carefully chose
its comments charmingly as usual, using words like ‘insane,’
‘twisted mind,’ and ‘absurdities’ (September 24).

Then came the Islamic cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, an American
citizen, who for some time had been blaming US foreign policy in
the Middle East as the cause of anti-American hatred and terrorist
acts. So the United States killed him. Ron Paul and Tony Bennett
can count themselves lucky.

What, then, is the basis of all this? What has the United States
actually been doing in the Middle East in the recent past?

• the shooting down of two Libyan planes in 1981

• the bombing of Lebanon in 1983 and 1984

• the bombing of Libya in 1986

• the bombing and sinking of an Iranian ship in 1987

• the shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane in 1988

• the shooting down of two more Libyan planes in 1989

• the massive bombing of the Iraqi people in 1991

• the continuing bombings and draconian sanctions against Iraq
from 1991 to 2003

• the bombing of Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998

• the habitual support of Israel despite the routine devastation
and torture it inflicts upon the Palestinian people

• the habitual condemnation of Palestinian resistance to this

• the abduction of ‘suspected terrorists’ from Muslim countries,
such as Malaysia, Pakistan, Lebanon and Albania, who were
then taken to places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where they
were tortured

• the large military and hi-tech presence in Islam’s holiest land,
Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf region

• the support of numerous undemocratic, authoritarian Middle

3i6

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

East governments from the Shah of Iran to Mubarak of Egypt
to the Saudi royal family

• the invasion, bombing, and occupation of Afghanistan, 2001
to the present, and Iraq, 2003 to the present

• the bombings and continuous bring of missiles to assassinate
individuals in Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, and Libya during
the period of 2006-2011

• the overthrow of the Libyan government of Muammar Gaddab
in 2011.

It can’t be repeated or emphasized enough. The biggest lie
of the ‘war on terror’, although weakening, is that the targets of
America’s attacks have an irrational hatred of the United States
and its way of life, based on religious and cultural misunder-
standings and envy. The large body of evidence to the contrary
includes a 2004 report from the Defense Science Board, ‘a Federal
advisory committee established to provide independent advice to
the Secretary of Defense.’ The report states:

Muslims do not hate our freedom, but rather they hate our
policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to
what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against
Palestinian rights, and the long-standing, even increasing, support
for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt,
Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan and the Gulf states. Thus, when
American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Is-
lamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy.

The report concludes: ‘No public relations campaign can save
America from bawed policies.’ 1

In the words of Sam Smith, editor of The Progressive Review ,
‘Homeland security is a rightwing concept fostered following 9-11
as the answer to the effects of 50 years of bad foreign policies in
the middle east. The amount of homeland security we actually
need is inversely related to how good our foreign policy is.’

DISSENT AND RESISTANCE

317

The difference between a congressman
and a normal human being

A report in the Washington Post (January 30, 2007), headlined
‘Soldier’s Death Strengthens Senators’ Antiwar Resolve’, informs
us that Senators Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) and John Kerry
(D-Mass.) have been rather upset upon learning of the death
in Iraq of an army captain whom they had met on a visit to the
country in December, 2006 and who made a strong impression
upon them. Dodd has been ‘radicalized,’ the story says, and Kerry
has been ‘energized’ in his opposition to the war.

Why, it must be asked, does it take the death of someone they
met by chance to fire up their anti-war sentiments? Many millions
of Americans, and many millions more around the world, have
protested the war vehemently and passionately without having met
any of the war’s casualties. What do these protestors have inside
of them that so many members of Congress seem to lack?

‘This was the kind of person you don’t forget,’ said Dodd. ‘You
mention the number dead, 3,000, the 22,000 wounded, and you
almost see the eyes glaze over. But you talk about an individual
like this, who was doing his job, a hell of a job, but was also
willing to talk about what was wrong, it’s a way to really bring
it to life, to connect.’

Dear reader, is it the same for you? Do your eyes glaze over
when you read or hear about the dead and wounded of Iraq?

Neither senator has apparently been ‘energized’ enough to call
for the immediate withdrawal of American forces from Iraq. That
would be too ‘radical.’

This gap - emotional and intellectual - between members
of Congress and normal human beings has been with us for
ages of course. The anti-Vietnam War movement burst out of
the starting gate back in August 1964, with hundreds of people
demonstrating in New York. Many of these early dissenters took

3i8

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

apart and critically examined the administration’s statements
about the war’s origin, its current situation, and its rosy picture
of the future. They found continuous omission, contradiction,
and duplicity, became quickly and wholly cynical, and called
for immediate and unconditional withdrawal. This was a state of
intellect and principle it took members of Congress - and then
only a minority - until the 1970s to reach. The same can be said
of the mass media. And even then - even today - our political
and media elite viewed Vietnam only as a ‘mistake’; that is, it was
‘the wrong way’ to fight communism, not that the United States
should not be traveling all over the globe to spew violence against
anything labeled ‘communism’ in the first place. Essentially, the
only thing these best and brightest have learned from Vietnam
is that we should not have fought in Vietnam.

The revolution was televised

In his seminal song, ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’, Gil
Scott-Heron told people in the 1970s (which, I maintain, were not
unlike the fabled 1960s) that a revolution was coming, that they
would no longer be able to live their normal daily life, that they
should no longer want to live their normal daily life, that they
would have to learn to be more serious about this thing they were
always prattling about, this thing they called ‘revolution.’

Fast Forward to 2009 . . . Gil Scott-Heron, now a ripe old 60,
was interviewed by the Washington Post (August 26):

WP: In the early 1970s, you came out with ‘The Revolution Will
Not Be Televised,’ about the erosion of democracy in America.

You all but predicted that there would be a revolution in which a
brainwashed nation would come to its senses. What do you think
now? Did we have a revolution?

GS-H: Yes, the election of President Obama was the revolution.

DISSENT AND RESISTANCE

319

Oh? So that’s it? That’s what we took clubs over our heads for. . .
tear gas, jail cells, and permanent police and FBI files. . . published
a million issues of the underground press? To get a president who
doesn’t have a revolutionary bone in his body? Not a muscle
or nerve or tissue or organ that seriously questions cherished
establishment beliefs concerning terrorism, permanent war, Israel,
torture, marijuana, healthcare, and the primacy of profit over the
environment and all else? Karl Marx is surely turning over in his
London grave. If the modern counterrevolutionary United States
had existed at the time of the American Revolution, it would have
crushed that revolution. And a colonial (white) Barack Obama
would have worked diligently to achieve some sort of bipartisan
compromise with the King of England, telling him we need to
look forward, not backward.

Democracy American Style. You gotta problem wit dat?

Here’s White House spokeswoman Dana Perino at a March 20,
2008 press briefing:

reporter: The American people are being asked to die and pay
for this, and you’re saying that they have no say in this war?

perino: I didn’t say that ... this President was elected -

reporter: Well, what it amounts to is you saying we have no input
at all.

perino: You had input. The American people have input every
four years, and that’s the way our system is set up. 2

In 1941, Edward Dowling, editor and priest, commented: ‘The
two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are,
first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a
democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest
we get it.’

320

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

There have as often been the same ‘causes’
for wars that did not happen as for wars that did

Henry Allingham died in Britain on July 18, 2009 at age 113,
believed to have been the world’s oldest man. A veteran of World
War I, he spent his final years reminding the British people about
their service members killed during the war, which came to about
a million: ‘I want everyone to know,’ he said during an interview
in November. ‘They died for us.’ 3

The whole million? Each one died for Britain? In the most
useless imperialist war of the twentieth century? No, let me
correct that - the most useless imperialist war of all time. The
British Empire, the French Empire, the Russian Empire, and the
wannabe American Empire joined in battle against the Austro-
Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire as youthful bodies
and spirits sank endlessly into the wretched mud of Belgium
and Germany, the pools of blood of Russia and France. The
wondrous nobility of it all is enough to make you swallow hard,
fight back the tears, light a few candles, and throw up. Imagine,
by the middle of this century Vietnam veterans in their nineties
and hundreds will be speaking of how each of their 58,000 war
buddies died for America. By 2075 we’ll be hearing the same
stirring message from ancient vets of Iraq and Afghanistan. How
many will remember that there were mammoth protest movements
against their glorious, holy crusades?

The time hundreds of thousands of American soldiers
refused to fight

It’s a very long shot to get large numbers of soldiers to angrily
protest a military action. But consider the period following the
end of World War II. Late 1945 and early 1946 saw what is likely
the greatest troop revolt that has ever occurred in a victorious

DISSENT AND RESISTANCE

321

army. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of American sol-
diers protested all over the world because they were not being
sent home even though the war was over. The GIs didn’t realize
it at first, but many soon came to understand that the reason they
were being transferred from Europe and elsewhere to various
places in the Pacific area, instead of being sent home, was that
the United States was concerned about uprisings against colonial-
ism, which, in the minds of Washington foreign-policy officials,
was equated with communism and other nasty un-American
things. The uprisings were occurring in British colonies, in Dutch
colonies, in French colonies, as well as in the American colony
of the Philippines.

In the Philippines there were repeated mass demonstrations
by GIs who were not eager to be used against the left-wing Huk
guerrillas. The New York Times reported in January 1946 about
one of these demonstrations: ‘“The Philippines are capable of
handling their own internal problems,” was the slogan voiced
by several speakers. Many extended the same point of view to
China. 54

American marines were sent to China to support the National-
ist government of Chang Kai-shek against the Communists of Mao
Tse-tung and Chou En-lai. They were sent to the Netherlands
Indies (Indonesia) to be of service to the Dutch in their sup-
pression of native nationalists. And American troop ships were
used to transport the French military to France’s former colony
in Vietnam. (Did anyone say ‘imperialism’?) These and other
actions of Washington led to numerous large GI protests in Japan,
Guam, Saipan, Korea, India, Germany, England, France, and
Andrews Field, Maryland, all concerned with the major slow-
down in demobilization and the uses for which the soldiers were
being employed. There were hunger strikes and mass mailings
to Congress from the soldiers and their huge body of support in
the States. In January 1946, Senator Edwin Johnson of Colorado

322

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

declared ‘It is distressing and humiliating to all Americans to
read in every newspaper in the land accounts of near mutiny in
the Army.’ 5

On January 13, 1946, five hundred American servicemen in
Paris adopted a set of demands called ‘The Enlisted Man’s Magna
Charta,’ calling for radical reforms of the master-slave relation-
ship between officers and enlisted men; also demanding the
removal of Secretary of War Robert Patterson. In the Philippines,
soldier sentiment against the reduced demobilization crystalized
in a meeting of GIs that voted unanimously to ask Secretary
Patterson and certain senators: ‘What is the Army’s position in
the Philippines, especially in relation to the reestablishment of
the Eighty-sixth Infantry Division on a combat basis?’ 6

By the summer of 1946 there had been a huge demobilization
of the armed forces, although there’s no way of knowing with any
exactness how much of that was due to the GIs’ protests. 7

If this is how American soldiers could be inspired and orga-
nized in the wake of ‘The Good War,’ imagine what can be done
today in the midst of America’s ‘God-awful Wars.’

RELIGION

Christopher Hitchens, Saddam Hussein, and religion

(June 8, 2007)

Christopher Hitchens published his book God Is Not Great in
the spring of 2007. It’s a compilation of the many terrible things
done in the name of God (or god) by various religions over the
centuries, far in excess, the book posits, of the terrible things
done by the secular world. The holy horrors continue today, of
course, perhaps worse than ever. If the leaders and would-be
leaders of Lebanon, Pakistan, the United States, Israel, Palestine,
Afghanistan, Somalia, and some other countries were secular
humanists our poor old world would not appear to be another
planet’s hell. Organized religion has a lot to answer for.

I have no particular quarrel with the Hitchens book’s general
theme. But when I first read a review of it I wondered how the
author dealt with Saddam Hussein and his secular government
in Iraq. Here was a guy who was genuinely a baddie, but not
a religious fanatic at all. The problem for Hitchens was that
being an ardent supporter of the US war against Iraq he had
to dispel the notion that the United States had overthrown a
secular government. Hitchens, however, came up with a simple
but elegant solution: he made Saddam and his regime ‘religious’!
Saddam, he writes, ‘had decked out his whole rule ... as one of

324

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

piety and jihad’ [against whom he doesn’t say, and I can’t either].
‘Those who regarded his regime as a “secular” one are deluding
themselves.’ 1

Islamic sharia law is now imposed in many parts of Iraq, with
numerous horror stories of its enforcement against young men and
women for their co-mingling, their clothing, their music, dancing,
and so on. The number of family honor killings based on religion
has jumped. Mosques and the buildings of other religions, in-
cluding Christian Assyrians, have suffered many serious attacks.
These things were rare to non-existent under Saddam Hussein,
when Shias and Sunnis regularly intermarried and Muslims did
not need to escape from Iraq by the thousands in fear of other
Muslims; neither did Jews or Christians. (In his last year or so
in power, Saddam Hussein spoke in religious terms more often
than earlier, but this appeared to be little more than paying lip
service to the anger stirred up in Iraq, as elsewhere in the Middle
East, by Washington’s War on Terror.)

This, then, is what Hitchens’s ‘Oh what a lovely war!’ has given
birth to. The irony for a person like him might be unbearable if
he were not rescued by denial.

It will not have passed unnoticed that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq
is not the only secular government overthrown by the United
States which led to a very religious successor. In Afghanistan in
the 1980s and early 1990s, the US masterminded the overthrow
of the ‘communist’ government, which led to rule by Islamic
fundamentalists, from which the Taliban emerged.

Imperialist fundamentalists also have a lot to answer for.

You can love your mom, eat lotsa apple pie,

and wave the American flag, but if you don’t believe in God

you are a hell-bound subversive

A 2006 study by the University of Minnesota’s Department
of Sociology identified atheists as ‘America’s most distrusted

RELIGION

325

minority.’ University researchers found that Americans rate
atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, homosexuals and
other minority groups in ‘sharing their vision of American society.’
Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least
willing to allow their children to marry. The researchers conclude
that atheists offer ‘a glaring exception to the rule of increasing
social tolerance over the last 30 years.’

Many of the study’s respondents associated atheism with an
array of moral indiscretions ranging from criminal behavior
to rampant materialism and cultural elitism. The study’s lead
researcher believes a fear of moral decline and resulting social
disorder is behind the findings. ‘Americans believe they share
more than rules and procedures with their fellow citizens, they
share an understanding of right and wrong. Our findings seem
to rest on a view of atheists as self-interested individuals who are
not concerned with the common good.’ 2

Hnrnrm. I’ve been a political activist for more than forty years.
I’ve marched and fought and published weekly newspapers along-
side countless atheists and agnostics who have risked jail and
police brutality, and who have forsaken a much higher standard
of living for no purpose other than the common good. Rampant
materialism? Hardly. ‘Secular humanism,’ many atheists call it.
And we don’t read about mobs of atheists stoning, massacring,
or otherwise harming or humiliating human beings who do not
share their non-beliefs. Never. That’s what the believers do. All
over the world.

The public attitude depicted by this survey may derive in
part from the Cold War upbringing of so many Americans - the
idea and the image of the ‘Godless atheistic communist.’ But I
think even more significant than that is the deep-seated feeling of
insecurity, even threat, that atheists can bring out in the religious,
putting into question, consciously or unconsciously, their core
beliefs and way of life.

326

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

You must wonder at times, as I do, how this world became
so unbearably cruel, corrupt, unjust, and stupid. Can it have
descended to this remarkable level by chance, or was it planned?
It’s enough to make one believe in God. Or the Devil.

American Muslims and other conservatives

In March of 2006 I agreed to speak on a panel at the American-
Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee convention, to be held
in June in Washington, DC. The panel was called ‘America,
Empire, Democracy and the Middle East.’ Then someone at
the ADC apparently realized that I was the person whose book
had been recommended by Osama bin Laden in January, and
they tried to cancel my appearance with phoney excuses. I ob-
jected, calling them cowards; they relented, then changed their
mind again, telling me finally ‘all of the seats on the journalism
panel, for the ADC convention, are filled.’ Two months after
our agreement, they had discovered that all the panel seats
were hlled.

American Muslims are very conservative. 72 percent of them
voted for Bush in 2000, before they got a taste of his police
state. University officials are also conservative, or can easily be
bullied by campus conservative organizations which are part
of a well-financed national campaign (think David Horowitz’s
Campus Watch) to attack the left on campus, be they faculty,
students, or outside speakers. In the six years following the bin
Laden recommendation I had virtually no university speaking
engagements, compared with five to ten per year earlier; on
several occasions students tried to arrange something for me but
were not successful at convincing school officials.

Speakout, a California agency which places progressive speak-
ers on campuses, informed me that the Horowitz-type groups
have succeeded in cutting sharply into their business.

RELIGION

327

Blasphemers and heros

In January of 2011 Salman Taseer was murdered in Pakistan. He
was the governor of Punjab province and a member of the secular
Pakistan People’s Party. The man who killed him, Mumtaz Qadri,
was lauded by some as a hero, showering rose petals on him.
Photos taken at the scene show him smiling.

Taseer had dared to speak out against Pakistan’s stringent
anti-blasphemy law, calling for leniency for a Christian mother
sentenced to death under the blasphemy ban. A national group of
500 religious scholars praised the assassin and issued a warning
to those who mourned Taseer. ‘One who supports a blasphemer
is also a blasphemer,’ the group said in a statement, which warned
journalists, politicians, and intellectuals to ‘learn’ from the killing.
‘What Qadri did has made every Muslim proud.’ 3

Nice, really nice, very civilized. It’s no wonder that decent,
God-fearing Americans believe that this kind of thinking and
behavior justify Washington’s multiple wars; that this is what
the United States is fighting against - Islamic fanatics, homicidal
maniacs, who kill their own countrymen over some esoteric piece
of religious dogma, who want to kill Americans partly over some
other imagined holy sin, because we’re ‘infidels’ or ‘blasphemers.’
How can we reason with such people? Where is the common
humanity the naive pacifists and anti-war activists would like us
to honor?

But war can be seen as America’s religion - most recently Paki-
stan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, and many more
in the past, all non-believers in Washington’s Church of Our Lady
of Eternal Invasion, Sacred Bombing, and Immaculate Torture,
all condemned to death for blasphemy, as each day the United
States unleashes blessed robotic death machines called Predators
flying over their lands to send ‘Hellhre’ (sic) missiles screaming
into wedding parties, funerals, homes; thousands of them killed

328

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

by now, as long as the US can claim each time - whether correctly
or not - that among their number was a prominent blasphemer,
call him Taliban, or al-Qaeda, or ‘insurgent,’ or ‘militant.’ How
can we reason with such people, the ones in the CIA who operate
these drone bombers? What is the difference between them and
Mumtaz Qadri? Qadri was smiling in satisfaction after carrying
out his holy mission. The CIA man sits comfortably in a room in
Nevada and plays his holy video game, then goes out to a satisfy-
ing dinner while his victims lay dying. Mumtaz Qadri believes
passionately in something called Paradise. The CIA man believes
passionately in something called American Exceptionalism.

Extending the comparison: in 2008 a young American named
Sharif Mobley moved to Yemen to study Arabic and religion.
American officials maintain that his purpose was actually to join
a terror group. They ‘see Mobley as one of a growing cadre of
native-born Americans who are drawn to violent jihad.’ 4 Can one
not say as well that the many young native-born Americans who
voluntarily join the military to fight in one of America’s many
foreign wars ‘are drawn to violent jihad’?

And are they not lauded by many as a hero, showered with
rose petals as they smile?

LAUGHING DESPITE THE EMPIRE

Happy New Year. Here’s what to look forward to
in the coming year

January 22: Congress passes a law requiring that all persons ar-
rested in anti-war demonstrations be sterilized. House Speaker
John Boehner declares it is ‘God’s will.’ House Minority Leader
Nancy Pelosi says that she has some reservation because there’s
no provision for a right of appeal.

February 15: Ron Paul assassinated by a man named Oswald
Harvey.

February 18: Oswald Harvey, while in solitary confinement and
guarded round the clock by 1,200 policemen and the entire 3rd
Army Brigade, is killed by man named Ruby Jackson.
February 26: Ruby Jackson suddenly dies in prison of a rare Asian
disease heretofore unknown in the Western hemisphere
march 6: US president Hopey Changey announces new dra-
conian sanctions against Iran, Syria, North Korea, Pakistan,
Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba, declaring that they all possess
weapons of mass destruction, are an imminent threat to the
United States, have close ties to al-Qaeda and the Taliban,
are aiding Islamic terrorists in Somalia, were involved in 9/11,
played a role in the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the

330

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

attack on Pearl Harbor, do not believe in God or American
Exceptionalism, and are all ‘really bad guys.’

April l: Bolivian military forces overthrow President Evo Morales.
The US State Department decries the loss of democracy.

April 2: The US recognizes the new Bolivian military junta, sells
it ioo jet fighters and 200 tanks.

April 3: Revolution breaks out in Bolivia endangering the mili-
tary junta; 40,000 American marines are sent to La Paz to quell
the uprising.

April 8: Dick Cheney announces from his hospital bed that the
United States has finally discovered caches of weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq - ‘So all those doubters can now just go
“F” themselves.’ The former vice president, however, refuses
to provide any details of the find because, he says, to do so
might reveal intelligence sources or methods.

April 10: ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, General Electric, General
Motors, AT&T, Ford, and IBM merge to form ‘Free Enterprise,
Inc.’

April 16: Free Enterprise, Inc. seeks to purchase Guatemala and
Haiti. Citigroup refuses to sell.

April 18: Free Enterprise, Inc. purchases Citigroup.

may 5: The Democratic Party changes its name to the Republican
Lite Party, and announces the opening of a joint bank account
with the Republicans so that corporate lobbyists need make
out only one check. In celebration of the change the new party
calls for eliminating the sales tax on yachts.

may 11: China claims to have shot down an American spy plane
over the center of China. The State Department categorically
denies the story.

may 12: The State Department admits that an American plane
may have ‘inadvertently’ strayed 2,000 miles into China, but
denies that it was a spy plane.

LAUGHING DESPITE THE EMPIRE

331

may 13: The State Department admits that the plane may have
been a spy plane but denies that it was piloted by a US govern-
ment employee.

may 14: The State Department admits that the pilot was a civilian
employee of a Defense Department contractor but denies that
China exists.

june 11: Homeland Security announces plan to collect the DNA
at birth of every child born in the United States.

july l: The air in Los Angeles reaches so bad a pollution level
that the rich begin to hire undocumented workers to breathe
for them.

august 6: The Justice Department announces that six people
have been arrested in New York in connection with a plan
to bomb the United Nations, the Empire State Building, the
Times Square subway station, Madison Square Garden, and
Lincoln Center.

august 7: Charges are dropped against four of ‘The New York
Six’ when it is determined that they are FBI agents.

august 16: At a major demonstration in Washington, the Tea Party
demands an end to all government expenditures. They also
warn Congress not to touch Social Security or Medicare.

august 26: Texas executes a 16-year-old girl for having an abor-
tion and a 12-year-old boy for possession of marijuana.

September 3: The Labor Department announces that Labor
Day will become a celebration of America’s gratitude to its
corporations, a day dedicated to the memory of J.P. Morgan
and Pinkerton strikebreakers killed in the line of duty.

September 12: The draft is reinstated for males and females, aged
16 to 45. Those who are missing a limb or are blind can apply
for non-combat roles.

September 14: Riots breaks out in twenty-four American cities in
protest at the new draft. 200,000 American troops are brought

332

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

home from Afghanistan, Iraq, and twenty-five other countries
to put down the riots.

September 28: The Tea Party calls for giving embryos the
vote.

October 19: Cops the world over form a new association, Police-
men’s International Governing Society. PIGS announces that
its first goal will be to mount a campaign against the notion
that a person is innocent until proven guilty, in those countries
where the quaint notion still dwells.

November 8: The turnout for the US presidential election is
9.6 percent. The voting ballots are all imprinted: ‘From one
person, one vote, to one dollar, one vote.’ The winner is ‘None
of the above.’

November it: The US prison population reaches 2-5 million. It
is determined that at least 70 percent of the prisoners would
not have been incarcerated a century ago, for the acts they
committed were then not criminal violations.

December 3: The Supreme Court rules that police may search
anyone if they have reasonable grounds for believing that the
person has pockets.

December 16: The Occupy Movement sets up a tent on the White
House lawn. An hour later a missile bred from a drone leaves
but a thin wisp of smoke.

People who like this sort of thing
will find this the sort of thing they like

To my dear readers in the United States and around the world,
in the spirit of the season, I wish each of you your choice of the
following:

Merry Christmas
Happy Chanukah
Joyous Eid

LAUGHING DESPITE THE EMPIRE

333

Festive Kwanza
Happy New Year
Gleeful Occupy
Erotic Pagan Rite
Internet Virtual Holiday
Heartwarming Satanic Sacrifice
Devout Atheist Season’s Greetings
Possessed Laying-on-of-Hands Ceremony
Really Neat Reincarnation with Auras and Crystals
And may your name never appear on a Homeland Security ‘No-fly
list’.

May you not vex a marginally literate high-school graduate with
a badge, a gun, and a can of pepper spray.

May your abuses at the hands of authority be only cruel, degrading
and inhuman, nothing that Mr Obama or Mr Cheney would
call torture.

May you or your country never experience a NATO or US
humanitarian intervention, liberation, or involuntary suicide.
May neither your labor movement nor your elections be supported
by the National Endowment for Democracy.

May the depleted uranium, cluster bombs, white phosphorous,
and napalm which fall upon your land be as precisely guided
and harmless as the State Department says they are.

May you receive for Christmas a copy of An Arsonist’s Guide to
the Homes of Pentagon Officials.

May you not fall sick in the United States without health insur-
ance, nor desire to go to an American university while being
less than wealthy.

May you rediscover what the poor in eighteenth-century France
discovered, that rich people’s heads can be mechanically sepa-
rated from their shoulders if they refuse to listen to reason.
May you be given the choice of euthanasia instead of having to
watch Republican primary debates.

2 <>

BUT WHAT CAN WE DO?

Some thoughts that Occupy my mind

(December 2, 2011)

When the Vietnam War became history, and the protest signs
and the bullhorns were put away, so too was the serious side of
most protestors’ alienation and hostility toward the government.
They returned, with minimal resistance, to the restless pursuit
of success, and the belief that the choice facing the world was
either ‘capitalist democracy’ or ‘communist dictatorship.’ The
war had been an aberration was the implicit verdict, a blemish
on an otherwise humane American record. The fear felt by the
powers-that-be that society’s fabric was unraveling and that the
Republic was hanging by a thread turned out to be little more
than media hype; it had been great copy.

I mention this to explain why I’ve been reluctant to jump with
both feet on the Occupy bandwagon. I first thought that if nothing
else the approaching winter would do them in; if not, it would
be the demands of their lives - they have to make some money
at some point, attend classes somewhere, lovers and friends and
family they have to cater to somewhere; lately I’ve been thinking
it’s the police that will do them in, writing finis to their marvelous
movement adventure - if you hold the system up to a mirror the
system can go crazy.

BUT WHAT CAN WE DO?

335

But now I don’t know. Those young people, and the old ones
as well, keep surprising me, with their dedication and energy,
their camaraderie and courage, their optimism and innovation,
their non-violence and their keen awareness of the danger of being
co-opted, their focusing on the economic institutions more than
on the politicians or political parties. There is also their splendid
signs and slogans, walking from New York to Washington, and
not falling apart following the despicable police destruction of
the Occupy Wall Street encampment. They’ve given a million
young people other ideas about how to spend the rest of their
lives, and commandeered a remarkable amount of media space.
The Washington Post on several occasions has devoted full-page
or near-full-page sympathetic coverage. Occupy is being taken
increasingly seriously by virtually all media.

Yet the 1960s and 1970s were also a marvelous movement
adventure - for me as much as for anyone - but nothing actually
changed in US foreign policy as a result of our endless protests,
many of which were also very innovative. American imperial-
ism has continued to add to its brutal record right up to this
very moment. We can’t even claim Vietnam as a victory for our
protests. The anti-Vietnam protest movement lasted nine years,
1964-73, before the United States left the country. It’s difficult to
ascribe cause and effect to that.

It has greatly helped Occupy’s growth and survival that they
have seldom mentioned foreign policy. That’s much more sensitive
ground than corporate abuse. Foreign policy gets into flag-waving,
‘our brave boys’ risking their lives, American exceptionalism, na-
tionalism, patriotism, loyalty, treason, terrorism, ‘anti-American,’
‘conspiracy theorist’ ... all those emotional icons that mainstream
America uses to separate a Good American from one who ain’t
really one of us.

Foreign policy cannot be ignored permanently, of course, if
for no other reason than that the nation’s wealth that’s wasted

336

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

on war could be used to pay for anything Occupy calls for. . . or
anything anyone calls for.

The education which Occupy has caused to be thrust upon the
citizenry - about corporate abuse and criminality, political cor-
ruption, inequality, poverty, and so on, virtually all unprosecuted
- would be highly significant if America were a democracy. But,
as it is, more and more people can learn more and more about
these matters, and get more and more angry, but have nowhere
to turn to, to effectuate meaningful change. Money must be
removed from the political process. Completely. It is my favorite
Latin expression: sine qua non - ‘without which, nothing.’

If not now, when? If not here, where? If not you, who?

(October 1, 2007)

I used to give thought to what historical time and place I would like
to have lived in. Europe in the 1930s was usually my first choice.
As the war clouds darkened, I’d be surrounded by intrigue, spies
omnipresent, matters of life and death pressing down, the oppor-
tunity to be courageous and principled. I pictured myself helping
desperate people escape to America. It was real Hollywood stuff;
think Casablanca. And when the Spanish Republic fell to Franco
and his fascist forces, aided by the German and Italian fascists
(while the United States and Britain stood aside, when not actu-
ally aiding the fascists), everything in my imaginary scenario
would have heightened - the fate of Europe hung in the balance.
Then the Nazis marched into Austria, then Czechoslovakia, then
Poland... one could have devoted one’s life to working against
all this, trying to hold back the fascist tide. What could be more
thrilling, more noble?

Miracle of miracles, miracle of time machines, I’m actually
living in this imagined period, watching as the Bush fascists

BUT WHAT CAN WE DO?

337

march into Afghanistan, bombing it into a ‘failed state’; then they
march into Iraq - death, destruction, and utterly ruined lives for
24 million human beings; threatening more of the same endless
night of hell for the people of Iran; overthrowing Jean-Bertrand
Aristide in Haiti; bombing helpless refugees in Somalia; relentless
attempts to destabilize and punish Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia,
Nicaragua, Gaza, and other non-believers in the empire’s God-
given mission. Sadly, my most common reaction to this real-life
scenario, daily in fact, is less heroic and more feeling scared or
depressed; not for myself personally but for our one and only
world. The news every day, which I consume in large portions,
slashes away at vny joie de vivre\ it’s not just the horror stories
of American military power run amok abroad and the injustices
of the ever- expanding police state at home, but all the lies and
stupidity which drive me up the wall, making me constantly
changing stations, turning the television or radio off, turning the
newspaper page.

Nonetheless, I must tell you, comrades, that at the same time
our contemporary period also brings out in me a measure of
what I imagined for my 1930s’ life. Our present world is in just
as great peril, even more so when one considers the impending
environmental catastrophe. The Bush [and now Obama] fascist
tide must be stopped.

Usually when I’m asked ‘But what can we do?’, my reply is
something along the lines of what I said earlier about educating
yourself and as many others as you can until your numbers reach
a critical mass; see it as the planting of seeds, to provide the
raw sprouts that can grow into direct action. I’m afraid that this
advice, whatever historical correctness it may embody, is not
terribly inspiring. However, I’ve assembled four wise men to add
their thoughts, hopefully raising the inspiration level a little. Let’s
call them the ‘patron saints of lost causes.’

338

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

I.F. Stone:

The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to
lose because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose
until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for
somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years hence, a lot
of other people have got to be willing - for the sheer fun and joy of
it - to go right ahead and fight, knowing you’re going to lose. You
mustn’t feel like a martyr. You’ve got to enjoy it.

Howard Zinn:

People think there must be some magical tactic, beyond the tradi-
tional ones - protests, demonstrations, vigils, civil disobedience
- but there is no magical panacea, only persistence.

Noam Chomsky:

There are no magic answers, no miraculous methods to overcome
the problems we face, just the familiar ones: honest search for
understanding, education, organization, action that raises the
cost of state violence for its perpetrators or that lays the basis for
institutional change - and the kind of commitment that will persist
despite the temptations of disillusionment, despite many failures
and only limited successes, inspired by the hope of a brighter
future.

Sam Smith:

Those who think history has left us helpless should recall the
abolitionist of 1830, the feminist of 1870, the labor organizer of
1890, and the gay or lesbian writer of 1910. They, like us, did not
get to choose their time in history but they, like us, did get to
choose what they did with it. Knowing what we know now about
how these things turned out, but also knowing how long it took,
would we have been abolitionists in 1830, or feminists in 1870, and
so on?

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1. http : / /killinghope.org/essays6/othrow.htm.

2. See chapter 18 of William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only
Superpower (Common Courage Press, Monroe ME, 2005).

3. http://killinghope.org/bblum6/assass.htm Depending on how you count it,
the total attempts can run into the hundreds; targeting Fidel Castro alone
totals 634 according to Cuban intelligence; see Fabian Escalante, Executive
Action: 634 Ways to Kill Fidel Castro (Ocean Press, Melbourne, 2006).

4. http://killinghope.org/superogue/bomb.htm.

5. http://killinghope.org/bblum6/suppress.html.

6. Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Angola, Australia, Bolivia, Bosnia, Brazil,
British Guiana (now Guyana), Bulgaria, Cambodia, Chad, Chile, China,
Colombia, Congo (also as Zaire), Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic,
East Timor, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Fiji, France, Germany (plus East
Germany), Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India,
Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kuwait, Laos, Lebanon, Libya,
Mongolia, Morocco, Nepal, Nicaragua, North Korea, Pakistan, Palestine,
Panama, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Russia, Seychelles, Slovakia, Somalia,
South Africa, South Korea, Soviet Union, Sudan, Suriname, Syria, Thailand,
Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam (plus North Vietnam), Yemen (plus South
Yemen) .

7. Washington Post , March 5, 2003, p. 19, column by A 1 Kamen.

8. Washington Post, December 27, 2001, p. Cl.

9. White House, Office of the Press Secretary, June 1, 2002.

10. Steve Vogel, The Pentagon: A History (Random House, New York, 2008).

11. The Black Commentator (weekly progressive Internet magazine), www.
blackcommentator.com, June 8, 2006.

12. Aviation Week and Space Technology, August 5, 1996, p. 51.

13. Speaking to the National Space Club, Washington, DC, September 15, 1997.

14. Excerpts are in the same sequence as found in the August 1997 brochure
beginning on page 1.

340

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

15. March 2004, www.stratcom.mil/fact_sheets/fact_sm.htmI. In 2002, the US
Space Command was merged with the US Strategic Command.

16. From article in Dissident Voice (online magazine), February 10, 2003.

17. Natalia Narochnitskaya, vice chairman of the international affairs committee
in the state Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, Washington Post ,
April 3, 2006, p. 14.

18. Village Voice (New York), November 27, 2001, p. 46; Scotland on Sunday ,
November 25, 2001.

19. Elting E. Morison, ed., The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 2 (Harvard
University Press, Cambridge MA, 1951), pp. 1176-7.

20. Z magazine , Noam Chomsky’s ZSpace Page, www.zmag.org/znet, July 21,
2005.

21. Associated Press, CNN.com, December 25, 2007.

CHAPTER 1

1. New York Tunes, December 22, 1989, p. 17.

2. Ibid., p. 16.

3. Los Angeles Times, December 1, 1990.

4. Washington Post, January 1, 2007.

5. National Prayer Breakfast, Washington, DC, February 7, 2008.

6. Testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government
Reform, October 2, 2007.

7. Washington Post, May 28, 2003.

8. Washington Post, July 20, 2004, statement attributed to President Bush in
the Lancaster (PA) New Era newspaper from a private meeting with Amish
families on July 9. The White House later said Bush said no such thing. (Yes,
we know how the Amish lie.)

9. Los Angeles Times, June 7, 1991.

10. CBS, 60 Minutes, May 12, 1996.

11. Associated Press, December 22, 2006.

12. Associated Press, April 6, 2011; some obvious errors in the original have been
corrected.

13. New York Times, November 6, 2003.

14. New York Times, April 16, 2002.

15. Los Angeles Times, February 24, 1994.

16. Guatemala: Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The
Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (Dooubleday, New York,
1982), p. 183. Jagan: Arthur Schlesinger, A Thousand Days (Houghton
Mifflin, Boston MA, 1965), pp. 774-9. Bishop: Associated Press, ‘Leftist
Government Officials Visit United States,’ May 29, 1983.

17. The Pentagon Papers (New York Times edition, 1971), pp. 4, 5, 8, 26; William
Blum, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II
(Zed Books, London, 2003), p. 123.

18. www.alys.be/pauwels/2publi_the_myth.htm. Available in English, Spanish,
French, German, Italian, and Dutch editions.

19. See my essay on the use of the atomic bomb: http://killinghope.org/essays6/
abomb.htm.

NOTES

341

20. US Agency for International Development, ‘Direct Economic Benefits of U.S.
Assistance Programs,’ 1999.

21. For discussion of various aspects of the Marshall Plan, see for example Joyce
and Gabriel Kolko, The Limits of Power: The World and US Foreign Policy
1Q45-1Q54 (Harper & Row, New York, 1972), chs 13, 16, 17; Sallie Pisani, The
CIA and the Marshall Plan (University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, 1991)
passim ; Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the
World of Arts and Letters (New Press, New York, 2000) passim.

22. New York Times, August 10, 2003.

23. Frances Fitzgerald, America Revised (Vintage, New York, 1980), pp. 129,
139-

24. www.foreignpolicy.corn/articles/2010/09/07/jared_cohen; Washington Post,
June 24, 2011.

25. Reuters, August 3, 2009.

26. See my discussion of this question at killinghope.org/essays6/myth.htm.

27. States News Service, July 22, 2005.

28. Washington Post, September 29, 2005.

29. Los Angeles Times, September 29, 2005.

30. Washington Post, October 7, 2005.

31. Washington Post, September 30, 2005.

32. Washington Post, June 11, 2005.

33. Boston Globe, October 12, 2001.

34. White House press briefing, January 7, 2010.

35. Washington Post, February 15, 2009.

36. For the full list of US bombings since World War II, see http://killinghope.
org/superogue/bomb.htm.

37. Washington Post, February 22, 2008.

38. Associated Press, February 21, 2008.

39. Observer, October 17 and November 28, 1999.

40. New York Times, June 25, 1999.

41. Observer, October 17 and November 28, 1999.

42. Associated Press, ‘France Confirms It Denied U.S. Jets Air Space, Says
Embassy Damaged,’ April 15, 1986.

43. Interfax news agency (Moscow), April 2, 2003.

44. CBS News, April 9, 2003.

45. Los Angeles Times, May 5, 2004.

46. Washington Post, April 17, 2007.

47. Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, August 17, 2009.

48. Washington Post, May 26, 2005.

49. Associated Press, May 14, 2002.

50. New York Times, September 20, 1999.

CHAPTER 2

1. Seattle Times, March 31, 2007.

2. Washington Post, March 30, 2007.

3. Financial Times, October 4, 2004.

4. Wall Street Journal, January 26, 2005.

342

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

5. Testimony before the House Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs,
US Congress, April 16, 1985.

6. ABC News, April 3, 2007.

7. Sunday Telegraph, February 25, 2007.

8. Washington Post, March 18, 2007.

9. Richard Ackland, ‘Innocence Ignored at Guantanamo,’ Sydney Morning
Herald, February 24, 2006.

10. New York Times, January 17, 2003.

11. Vorin Whan, cd.. A Soldier Speaks: Public Papers and Speeches of General of
the Army Douglas MacArthur (Praeger, New York, 1965).

12. The Daily News, February 10, 2006.

13. Washington Post, April 14, 2005; United Press International, April 18,

2005.

14. Time, July 7, 2006, article by Joshua Marshall; Associated Press, July 14,

2006.

15. Sears case: Knight Ridder Newspapers, June 23, 2006; Independent, June 25,
2006; St. Petersburg Times (Florida), June 24, 2006; New York Times, August
13, 2006.

16. Associated Press, July 14, 2006.

17. Toledo: Associated Press, April 18, 2006; Sears: South Florida Sun Sentinel,
July 26, 2006.

18. Associated Press, July 8, 2006.

19. Christian Science Monitor, October 29, 2010.

20. Washington Post, April 14, 2006.

21. Deutsche Presse-Agentur, April 13, 2006.

22. Miami Herald, March 26, 1983.

23. www.unodc.org/unodc/terrorism_convention_civil_aviation.html.
CHAPTER 3

1. Washington Post, December 18, 2011.

2. New York Times, May 19, 2006.

3. BBC, March 4, 2010; Washington Post, December 3, 2005.

4. Associated Press, November 11, 2006.

5. United Press International, July 25, 2007.

6. New York Times, November 30, 2003.

7. Washington Post, September 7, 2007.

8. Mary Eberstadt, ed., Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives
Chronicle Their Political Journeys (Simon & Schuster, New York, 2007),
P- 73 -

9. National Public Radio (NPR), Day to Day, June 6, 2006.

10. Associated Press, December 4, 2006.

11. William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower (Com-
mon Courage Press, Monroe ME, 2005), p. 304.

12. CBS, Evening News, August 20, 2002.

13. ABC Nightline, December 4, 2002.

14. 60 Minutes II, February 26, 2003.

15. Washington Post, March 1, 2003.

NOTES

343

16. Associated Press, July 28, 2010.

17. 60 Minutes, January 27, 2008. See also Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting,
Action Alert, February 1, 2008.

18. New York Times, August 21, 2004.

19. www.crudedesigns.org.

20. Interview with Institute for Public Accuracy, Washington, DC, November
22, 2005.

21. Interview by Andy Clark, Amsterdam Forum, December 18, 2005; audio and
text at www.informationclearingbouse.info/article11330.htm.

22. Washington Post, September 6, 2007.

23. For a good discussion of this, see the Inter Press Service report of November
14, 2007 by Ali al-Fadhily.

24. Associated Press, November 6, 2007.

25. New York Times, November 26, 2007.

26. Washington Post, December 5, 2007.

27. Joseph Farah, editor of the conservative WorldNetDaily (worldnetdaily.
com/news/article. asp?article_id=56769), August 6, 2007.

28. Mona Charen, National Review Online, July 20, 2007.

29. Search Google News: <bloodbath iracj vietnam> for more examples.

30. Newsweek, April 3, 2006.

31. Washington Post, April 15, 2006.

32. Associated Press, March 27, 2006.

33. Philadelphia Inquirer, March 26, 2006.

34. Dahlia Lithic, Slate.com, March 28, 2006.

35. Washington Post, January 2, 2006.

36. Ibid.

37. William Blum, Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
(Common Courage Press, Monroe ME, 2004), pp. 134-8.

38. Washington Post , January 3, 2006.

39. Associated Press, September 8, 2002.

40. New York Times, November 6, 2003.

41. Washington Post, October 22, 2005.

42. New York Times, April 10, 1988, sect. 4, p. 3, re Iran; Washington Post, August
4 and September 4, 1988.

43. New York Times, January 31, 2003.

44. Barry Lando, ‘Saddam Hussein, a Biased Trial,’ Le Monde, October 17,
2005.

45. New York Times, October 3, 2005.

46. Reuters news agency, October 17, 2005.

47. Washington Post, September 20, 21; A 1 Jazeera, September 19, 2005.

CHAPTER 4

1. Talk given by the president at Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, August
17, 2009.

2. Talk at the Paul H. Nitze School for Advanced International Studies,
Washington, DC, September 20, 2007.

3. See, for example, ‘Oil Barons Court Taliban in Texas,’ Telegraph, December

344

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

17, 1997. For further discussion of the TAPI pipeline and related issues,
see the article by international petroleum engineer John Foster: www.
ensec.org/index.php?option = com_content&view = article&id = 233 :
afghanistan_the_tapi_pipeline_and_energy_geopolitics&cati.

4. The Times Online, May 31, 2010.

5. Associated Press, May 31. 2010.

6. Vermont television station WCAX, July 4, 2009, WCAX.com.

7. Los Angeles Times, July 6, 2007.

8. Article by Kim Barker, Chicago Tribune, July 8, 2007.

9. Los Angeles Times, July 6, 2007.

10. Washington Post, April 22, 1999.

11. William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower (Common
Courage Press, Monroe ME, 2005), pp. 103-4.

12. US Department of the Army, Afghanistan, A Country Study (1986), pp. 121,
128, 130, 223, 232.

CHAPTER 5

1. AlterNet, www.alternet.org/, May 5, 2006.

2. Associated Press, December 12, 2006.

3 . washingtonpost.com/wp_dyn/content/article/2007/09 / 24/AR2007092401042.
html.

4. nkusa.org/activities/Speeches/2006Iran-ACohen.cfm (Cohen’s talk); Alex
Spillius, Telegraph, December 13, 2006; Associated Press, December 12,
2006.

5. Globe and Mail (Toronto), December 13, 2006.

6. Associated Press, December 12, 2006.

7. counterpunch.org/tilleyo8282006.html.

8. Associated Press, December 16, 2006.

9. Washington Post, March 5, 1987.

10. whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/2012/03/04/remarks_president_aipac_pol-
icy_conference_o.

11. Haaretz.com (Israel), October 25, 2007; print edition October 26.

12. Washington Post, March 5, 2009.

13. CBS, ‘Face the Nation,’ January 8, 2012; see video at http://ufohunterorguk.
com/20i2/oi/i2/us_defense_secretary_leon_panetta_admits_iran_not_mak-
ing_nuclear_weapons.

14. Guardian, January 31, 2012.

15. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, www.fair.org/index.php.

16. Reuters, January 12, 2012.

17. killinghope.org/bblum6/assass.htm.

18. Video of Pletka making these remarks at http://politicalcorrection.org/
fpmatters /201112020008 .

19. www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/reports/20lo/o8_arab_opinion_poll_
telhami/o8_arab_opinion_poll_telhami.pdf.

20. Washington Post, December 7, 2007, p. 8.

21. New York Tunes, December 3, 2007.

22. Washington Post, December 9, 2007.

NOTES

345

23. Washington Post, December 4, 2007.

24. Washington Post, December 5, 2007.

25. ‘How They Stole the Bomb from Us,’ December 8, 2007, http://zope.
gush_shalom.org/index_en.html.

26. New York Times, February 3, 1992, p. 8.

27. Guardian, October 10, 1983.

28. Haaretz.com, October 1, 2007.

29. Haaretz.com, October 25, 2007; print edition October 26.

30. Newsweek, October 20, 2007.

31. Washington Post, May 6, 2004.

32. Washington EW, July 22, 2007, p. B7, op-ed by Dobbins.

33. Washington Post, June 18, 2006.

CHAPTER 6

1. Washington Post, May 5, 2006, p. Bi.

2. New York Times, June 30, 2004.

3. Washington Post, April 12, 2006, p. C3.

4. Associated Press, November 16, 2005.

5. Talk by Bush at Freedom House, Washington, DC, March 29, 2006.

6. Los Angeles Times, May 31, 1991.

7. Associated Press, January 2, 2006.

8. Copley News Service, October 10, 2005.

9. Washington Post, June 16, 2007, letter from Andrew Apostolou.

10. killinghope.org/bblum6/bulgaria. htm.

11. For further discussion of this, see William Blum, Freeing the World to Death
(Common Courage Press, Monroe ME, 2004), pp. 166-71.

CHAPTER 8

1. From a March 5, 2007 press release by Archives of General Psychiatry.

2. Guardian, February 17, 2006.

3. Testimony before the International Commission of Inquiry On Crimes
Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration, New York, ses-
sion of January 21, 2006.

4. Associated Press, August 1, 2007.

5. Press conference, February 25, 2009, transcript by Federal News Service.

6. Agence France Presse (AFP), January 20, 2009.

7. New York Times, December 29, 1998.

8. Associated Press, November 17, 2008.

9. See William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
(Common Courage Press, Monroe ME, 2005), ch. 10, ‘Supporting Pol Pot.’

10. See William Blum, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since
World War II (Zed Books, London, 2003), ch. 20, ‘Cambodia, 1955-1973.’

11. www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/02/jones_munich_conference.

html.

12. Reuters news agency, January 30, 2009.

13. The War Crimes Act (18 U.S.C. 2441).

14. Haaretz, January 30, 2009.

346 AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

15. Blum, Rogue State, pp. 71-6.

16. Los Angeles Times, February 1, 2009.

17. New York Times, February 6, 2009.

18. Fars News Agency (Iran), November 21, 2006.

19. Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, ‘Is Military Research Hazardous
to Veterans’ Health? Lessons Spanning Half a Century,’ December 8, 1994,
P-5-

20 . Ibid., passim.

21. Washington Post, October 2 and 23, 1996, and July 31, 1997 for the estimated
numbers of affected soldiers.

22. Journal of the American Medical Association, September 1, 1999, p. 822.

23. Washington Post, December 20, 2006, p. 19.

24. Associated Press, January 15, 2006.

25. Los Angeles Times, January 29, 2006.

26. Washington Post, November 15, 2005.

27. Washington Post, November 18, 1996.

28. Reuters, June 10, 2002.

29. Ellen Messer and Marc J. Cohen, ‘US Approaches to Food and Nutrition
Rights, 1976-2008.’

CHAPTER 9

1. Sunday Telegraph (Australia), December 19, 2010.

2. Salon.com, December 15, 2010, www.salon.com/news/wikileaks/index.
html?story=/opinion/greenwald/20lo/l2/l4/manning; Washington Post,
December 16, 2010.

3. Guardian, December 17, 2010.

4. New York Times, December 19, 2010.

5. Washington Post, December 20, 2010.

6. National Public Radio, Diane Rehm Show, December 9, 2010.

7. Guardian , December 21, 2010.

8. www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27119.htm.

9. Associated Press, February 3, 2012.

CHAPTER 10

1. Washington Post, October 17, 2004, p. C10.

2. Jonathan Vankin, Conspiracies, Cover-ups and Crimes: Political Manipulation
and Mind Control in America (Paragon House, St Paul MN, 1991), p. 120.

CHAPTER 11

1. www.un.org/icty/legaldoc-e/basic/statut/statute-febo8-e.pdf.

2. This and most of the other material concerning the complaints to the Tri-
bunal mentioned here were transmitted to this writer by Mandel and other
complainants. See also Michael Mandel, How America Gets Away With
Murder (Pluto Press, London, 2004).

3. Press release from Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour, The Hague, May 13,
1999-

4. http://un.org/icty/cases_e/factsheets/achieve_e.htm.

NOTES

347

5. Observer, December 26, 1999; Washington Times, December 30 and 31, 1999;
New York Times, December 30, 1999.

6. There are numerous articles in the world press of the past twenty years about
the KLA’s inordinate thuggery; Google <KLA> and one or more of the key
words, such as ‘drugs,’ ‘prostitution,’ ‘ethnic cleansing,’ ‘transplants,’ etc.

7. http://wikipedia.org, under ‘Camp Bondsteel.’

8. Del Ponte’s book and the turmoil it has produced have been almost entirely
ignored in the US media, but if one Googles her name and the book, one will
find many reports from Europe.

CHAPTER 12

1. Viagra: Reuters, April 29, 2011.

2. See, for example, www.mathaba.net/news/?x=627i96?rss. For further discus-
sion of why Libyans may have been motivated to support Gaddafi, have a look at
this video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7HopG7Yxw8&feature=related.

3. Guardian, September 3, 2011.

4. Washington Post, ‘Islamists Rise to Fore in New Libya,’ September 15,
2011.

5. USA Today, October 24, 2011.

6. www.thehumanitarianwar.com.

7. Rashid Khalidi, professor of Arab studies, Columbia University, Washington
Post, November 11, 2007.

8. For a counter-view of the Libyan ‘massacre’ stories, see www.abovetopsecret.
com/forum/ thread6gi464 /pgi .

9. You can find the figures at the NATO site: www.aco.nato.int/page424201235.
aspx.

10. For a history of this hostility, including the continual lies and scare cam-
paigns, see the Libya chapter in my Killing Hope: US Military and CIA
Interventions Since World War II (Zed Books, London, 2003).

CHAPTER 13

1. Paul Sigmund, The Overthrow ofAllende and the Politics of Chile, ig64~igy6
(University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA, 1977), p. 297.

2. ‘Covert Action in Chile, 1963-1973, a Staff Report of the Select Committee
to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities
(US Senate),’ December 18, 1975, p. 4.

3. Sigmund, The Overthrow ofAllende and the Politics of Chile, p. 34.

4. A report ofVenezueIanaIysis.com, an English-language news service pub-
lished by Americans in Caracas, November 27, 2007, article by Michael
Fox.

5. For further information, see John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit
Man (Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, 2004), passim.

6. Newsweek magazine, June 18, 1973, p. 22.

7. See Michael Parenti, The Anti- Communist Impulse (Random House, New
York, 1969) for these and similar examples.

8. Associated Press, February 4, 2006.

9. For further detail, see Bart Jones, op-ed, Los Angeles Times, May 30, 2007;

348

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

also www.venezuelanalysis.com; www.misionmiranda.com/rctv.htm.
to. Edward Schumacher-Matos, Washington Post, February 14, 2009.

11. New York Times , February 13, 2009.

12. Washington Post , February 12, 2009.

13. Washington Post, February 8, 2009.

14. Holly Sklar, Washington’s War on Nicaragua (South End Press, Boston MA,
1988), p. 243-

15. New York Times, October 7, 1990, p. 10.

16. For the full report of October 28, 2006, see Nicaragua Network of Washing-
ton, DC: nicanet.org; chuck@afgy.org.

17. Nicaragua Network, October 29, 2001, www.nicanet.org/pubs/hotline1029_
2001.html; New York Times , November 4, 2001, p. 3.

18. Miami Herald, October 29, 2001.

19. Independent, September 6, 2006; contact Nicaragua Network, nicanet.org;
Kathy@afgy.org, for list of US interventions into the Nicaraguan democratic
process. Independent, September 6, 2006; ‘2006 Nicaraguan Elections and
the US Government Role. Report of the Nicaragua Network delegation to
investigate US intervention in the Nicaraguan elections of November 2006,’
www.nicanet.org/pdf/Delegation%20Report.pdf.

CHAPTER 14

1. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 10^8-1060, Vol.
VI: Cuba (1991), p. 885.

2. White House press release, October 10, 2003.

3. Press release from the Cuban Mission to the United Nations, October 17,
2007, re this and preceding three paragraphs.

4. For a detailed discussion of Cuba’s alleged political prisoners, see www.
huffingtonpost.com/salim-Iamrani/cuba-and-the-number-of-po_b_689845.
btml.

5. Washington Post, May 13, 2006, p. 10.

6. Reuters, March 17, 2006.

7. NPR, Day to Day, August 1, 2006.

8. Prensa Latina (Cuban news agency), March 12, 2011.

9. The Militant (US Socialist Workers Party weekly newspaper), April 4,
2011.

10. Bloomberg news agency, September 19, 2007.

11. Huffington Post, December 18, 2010.

12. Presented in a Wall Street Journal video: http://online.wsj.com/video/cu-
ban_doctors_come_in_from_the_cold/o69ECoEA_84oF_4B3C_B8C6_
2372B52D107A.html.

CHAPTER 15

1. Washington Post, January 29, 2007.

2. For further details of the civil war period, see William Blum, Killing Hope:
US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (Zed Books, London,
2003), ch. 54.

3. See the British Cabinet papers for 1939, summarized in the Washington Post ,

NOTES

349

January 2, 1970 (reprinted from the Manchester Guardian ); also D.F. Fleming,
The Cold War and Its Origins, igiy-ig6o , vol. 1 (Doubleday, Garden City NY,
1961), p P . 48-97.

4. For a concise history of American anti-communism, see http://killinghope.
org/bblum6/Intro2004.htm.

5. See Blum, Killing Hope, ch. 3.

6. New York Times, June 27, 1963, p. 12.

7. USA Today, October 11, 1999, p. 1.

8. Washington Post, May 12, 2009; see a similar story November 5, 2009.

9. Carolyn Eisenberg, Drawing the Line: The American Decision to Divide
Germany, 1944-1949 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996); or see a
concise review of this book by Kai Bird in The Nation, December 16, 1996.

10. See Blum, Killing Hope , p. 400 n8.

11. Guardian, March 7, 1985.

12. National Security Archive: www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv. Search <Ford Timor>;
William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower (Com-
mon Courage Press, Monroe ME, 2005), pp. 188-9.

13. New York Times, September 17, 1974, p. 22.

14. Michael Beschloss, Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes 1963-1964
(Simon & Schuster, New York, 1997), p. 306. All other sources for this section
on Gordon can be found in Washington Post, December 22, 2009, obituary;
Guardian, August 31, 2007; Blum, Killing Hope, ch. 27.

15. Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World
of Arts and Letters (New Press, New York, 2000).

16. Washington Post, October 7, 2010.

17. Andreas Papandreou, Democracy at Gunpoint: The Greek Front (Doubleday,
New York, 1970), p. 294.

18. New York Times, November 21, 1999.

19. New York Times, November 23, 1999.

20. Washington Post, October 21, 1973, p. C5.

21. Washington Post Book World, June 24, 2008, review of One Minute to
Midnight,

22. Khrushchev Remembers (Andre Deutsch, London, 1971) pp. 494, 496.

23. Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (Simon & Schuster, New York,
1983), p. 246.

24. Los Angeles Times, September 23, 1994.

25. Washington Post, July 18, 2001.

26. BBC, August 14, 2004.

27. Washington Post, August 30, 2005, p. 10.

28. Der Spiegel, November 20, 2006, p. 24.

29. Washington Post, January 10, 2007, p. 7.

30. Washington Post, March 23, 2006, p. 21; see also Washington Post, May 26,
2004, p. A25 for a further example of same.

31. Washington Post, April 9, 2006, p. 2.

32. Associated Press, March 29, 2006.

350

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

CHAPTER 17

1. http : / /killinghope.org/ superogue/system.htm.

2. Washington Post , February 26, 2010.

3. Associated Press, August 21, 2008; Washington Post , August 22, 2008.

4. Associated Press, March 2, 2008.

5. Sunday Telegraph (Sydney), August 10, 2003.

6. santafenewmexican.com/news/66424.html.

7. Washington Post , February 13, 2007, p. 14.

8. Washington Post , February 23, 2006.

9. Speaking at the ‘Take Back America’ conference, organized by the Campaign
for America’s Future, June 20, 2007, Washington, DC; this excerpt can be
heard at democracynow.org.

10. Roger Morris (former member of the National Security Council), Partners
in Power: The Clintons and Their America (Henry Holt, 1996), p. 415.

11. Ibid.

12. National Review Online, May 1, 2007.

13. Fortune magazine, July 9, 2007.

CHAPTER l8

1. Washington Post, March 22, 2007.

2. tomdispatch.com/post/174810.

3. Los Angeles Times, June 18, 1990.

4. Google <US military bases toxic>.

CHAPTER 19

1. US Senate, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Committee on
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, The Role of Market Specula-
tion in Rising Oil and Gas Prices, June 27, 2006.

2. Washington Post, ‘Wall Street Lobbies to Protect Speculative Oil Trades,’
June 19, 2008, p. Di.

3. Washington Post, May 10, 2008, p. D3.

4. ‘What To Do About the Price of Oil,’ Multinational Monitor, May 28, 2008,
www.multinationalmonitor.org/editorsblog.

5. Washington Post , September 25, 2008.

6. Column by Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post, August 3, 2005, pp. D1-2.

7. Wallace Peterson, Silent Depression: The Fate of the American Dream (W.W.
Norton, New York, 1994).

8. Washington Post, May 26, 2004, p. A25; see also Washington Post, March 23,
2006, p. 21 for a further example of same.

9. Associated Press, August 11, 2011.

10. Agence France Presse, May 21, 2010, referring to a remark made in 2009.

11. Los Angeles Times, January 2, 1995.

12. Washington Post , September 24, 2003.

13. New York Times, November 3, 2010.

14. Jonathan Rowe, Dollars & Sense magazine, July- August 1999.

15. Los Angeles Times, April 15, 2006.

NOTES

351

16. Washington Post , March 29, 2009.

17. ‘Russia Now’ (Moscow), insert in Washington Post , March 25, 2009.

18. Los Angeles Times, September 2, 1994.

19. Frank Bernack, Jr, Hearst Corporation president, address to the American
Bar Association, early 1987, reported in In These Times magazine (Chicago),
June 24-July 7, 1987.

CHAPTER 20

1. The Nation , June 4, 1990, pp. 763-4.

2. Washington Post, October 26, 2011.

3. Index on Censorship online, the UK’s leading organization promoting free-
dom of expression, October 18, 2001.

4. Independent, April 24, 1999, p. 1.

5. Bristol Evening Post, April 24, 1999.

6. Guardian, April 24, 1999.

7. The Pentagon Papers (New York Times edition), pp. xii-xiii.

8. House of Representatives, Congressional Record , May 12, 1966, pp. 9977-8,
reprint of an article by Morley Safer of CBS News.

CHAPTER 21

1. William Blum, ‘Cuban Political Prisoners... in the United States,’ http://
killinghope.org/bblum6/polpris.htrn.

2. Washington Post, February 25, 2008, p. A4.

3. Agence France Presse, December 1, 2008.

4. Haaretz.com, May 16, 2007.

5. Bill Van Auken, Global Research, July 18, 2008, www.globalresearch.ca.

6. Chicago Tribune, July 27, 2004.

7. Chicago Tribune, September 25, 2004.

8. House of Representatives, Congressional Record, June 21, 2005, p. S6897.

9. For the full Brzezinski interview, see killinghope.org/bblum6/brz.htm.

10. Associated Press, March 28, 2008.

11. See, for example, Peter Wehner, ‘Why Republicans Like Obama,’ Washington
Post, February 3, 2008, p. B7.

12. www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/2010/09/23/remarks_president_unit-
ed_nations_general_assembly.

13. http://harpers.org/subjects/JRMPublishersNote (June 17, 2009).

14. New York Times, October 30, 2007.

15. New York Times, December 27, 1977, p. 40.

16. Lobster magazine (Hull) no. 14, November 1987.

17. William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower (Com-
mon Courage Press, Monroe ME, 2005), pp. 199-200.

18. Carl Oglesby, Ravens in the Storm: A Personal History of the ig 6 os Antiwar
Movement (Scribner, New York, 2008), passim.

19. Wikipedia entry for Anne Dunham.

20. George Cotter, ‘Spies, Strings and Missionaries,’ The Christian Century
(Chicago), 25 March 1981, p. 321.

21. Washington Post, January 15, 2012.

352

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

22. Sam Smith was a longtime publisher and journalist in Washington, DC,
now living in Maine. Subscribe to his marvelous newsletter, the Progressive
Review, at www.prorev.com.

23. Washington Post, May 27, 2010.

24. Democratic Party function, Miami, FL, March 4, 2011, Congressional Quar-
terly, transcriptions.

25. Los Angeles Times, March 11, 2011.

26. The full speech can be read at comicism.tripod.com/350521.html.

27. Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II (Zed
Books, London, 2003), ch. 32.

28. Blum, Rogue State, ch. 23.

CHAPTER 22

1. Sunday Telegraph, July 18, 1999.

2. Independent, November 22, 1995.

3. Far Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong), October 30, 1997, article by Nate
Thayer, pp. 15 and 20.

4. Washington Post, May 11, 2007.

5. Passionate Declarations (HarperCollins, New York, 2003), p. 40; Z Magazine,
May 2006, interview by David Barsamian.

6. Democracy in America (1840), ch. 16.

7. New York Times, December 25, 1992.

8. George Orwell, ‘Notes on Nationalism,’ p. 83, 84, in Such, Such Were the
Joys (Harcourt Brace, New York, 1945).

9. Alan Cohnes, Red, White and Liberal (Regan, New York, 2003), p. 30.

10. The Outline of History (London, 1920), vol. II, chapter 37, p. 782.

11. ‘Letters on Patriotism,’ 1869.

12. International Herald Tribune, February 25, 2003.

CHAPTER 23

1. Christian Science Monitor, November 29, 2004.

2. White House press briefing, March 20, 2008.

3. Washington Post, July 19, 2009.

4. New York Tunes, January 8, 1946, p. 3.

5. New York Times, January 11, 1946, p. 1.

6. Ibid., p. 4.

7. For more information about the soldiers’ protests, see Mary-Alice Waters,
G.I.s and the Fight against War (New York, 1967), a pamphlet published by
Young Socialist magazine.

CHAPTER 24

1. Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
(Twelve Books, New York, 2007), p. 25.

2. www.soc.umn.edu/amp/AMPPublications.htm.

3. Washington Post, January 5, 2011.

4. Washington Post , September 5, 2010.

INDEX

abortion 232-4
Afghanistan

and Soviet Union 83
oil and gas pipelines as reason for
war 80-81

Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud 88-94
Albania, backwardness of 109-10
Albright, Madeleine 19, 157, 312
An Inconvenient Truth (A1 Gore) 243-4
Arab public opinion 100
Assange, Julian 131-6
atheism 324-6

Bennett, Tony 315-16
Berlin Wall 205-8

bin Laden, Osama, and William Blum
281-4

Blair, Tony 276

Bolton, John 102, 310-11

bombing, US 33-4, 84-6; see also Serbia

Bosch, Orlando 51-2

Boxer, Barbara 112

Brazil 210-11

Brennan, John 31

British Guiana 21

Bulgaria 110

Bush, George H.W. 18-19, 108-9
Bush, George W. 18-19, 30, 55, 102,
106-10, 117, 311

Cambodia/Khmer Rouge 116-18
capitalism 247-62

Cheney, Dick 45, 47, 75, 106-7
Chile 170-73, 178-9, 209, 214, 304
Chomsky, Noam 8, 64, 228, 338
Clinton, Bill 213

Clinton, Hillary, closet conservative

240-42

Cold War, end of 103
conservatives, American 239-40
conspiracy theorists 134-5
Cuba 51-2, 142-3, 186-98

Davis, Angela 244-5
Debs, Eugene 11
Dershowitz, Alan 115
drones, US use of 126-7

Ecuador and WikiLeaks 139-40
Egypt and WikiLeaks 143
El Salvador 199-201
environment, US military greatest
spoiler of 244-6

Ford, Gerald. 208-9
Fox News 68
France 35

Gaddafi, Muammar 19-20
Gates, Robert 36-7, 102
Gerassi, John 224-5
Germany

in Afghanistan 81-2
US teaching Germany how to kill

354

AMERICA’S DEADLIEST EXPORT

218-19

WikiLeaks 144
Google 27

Gorbachev, Mikhail 83
Gordon, Lincoln 209-11
Greece 212-14
Grenada 21
Guatemala 21

Haiti and WikiLeaks 143-4
Hicks, David 40-41
homosexuality 238
Honduras and WikiLeaks 139
Hughes, Karen 29, 76

ideology of Americans 230-32
India 111, 144-5
Indonesia 37-8, 208
International Atomic Energy Agency
and WikiLeaks 137-8
Iran

nuclear threat 95-8, 101, 103-5
US myths about 88-92
US sanctions 99-100
Iraq

alleged reduction in violence 65-7,
144

informing US they had no WMD
61-2

loss of a secular state 324
pre-war peace offer 20
reception to US military occupiers
69-70

Saddam Hussein ‘killing own people’

75-6

the phoney threat 74-5
Israel 88-99, 101-5, 119-20, 134-5, 141,
144, 147, 176-7, 186-7, 275, 281, 284,
286-8, 291, 296-7, 310, 315, 3i6

Japan 217-8

Johnson, Lyndon Baines, 210
Jones, James 118

Kosovo, 34, 42, 154 - 5 , 158-60
Kubisch, Jack 214-15
Kucinich, Dennis 11-12

Latin America, emigration to US caused

by US policies 184-6
Ledeen, Michael 6-7
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
(Tim Weiner) 277-80
Leno, Jay 90, 195, 274-5
Libya 19-20, 35, 92-3, 150-3, 161-9,
274-5, 315-16

MacArthur, Douglas, General 45, 48,
217, 227

Mailer, Norman 313
Manning, Bradley 132, 135-7
marijuana 239
Marshall Plan 22-5
Mexico 20-1

Middle East, US hostile acts in
315-16

Moore, Michael 56, 197
Moussaoui, Zacarias 50-51
Mullen, Michael, Admiral 32
Murray, Craig 116
Muslims in America 326

National Public Radio (NPR) 195,
269-72

NATO 156-9, 164, 223-4, 276
Nicaragua 181-4
Nobel Peace Prize 95
nuclear missile crisis, 1962 215-16

Obama, Barack

and the empire, early warnings
285-90

Cairo speech compared to Hitler
speech 298-302

CIA background of him and his
mother 292-4

Indonesia and human rights 141
not punishing US war criminals
117

poll of Arab people, very low
standing in 101
torture 121-22
war lover 59-60, 167-8
who is this man? 290-2, 297
Occupy movement 334-6
Ochs, Phil 227, 294
Oglesby, Carl 226
Orwell, George 44, 45, 276, 307

INDEX

355

Pan Am 103, bombing of 150-52
Panama 18

Panetta, Leon 96, 98, 116, 121-2
Paul, Ron 314

Pentagon, March on (1967) 227-9
Pletka, Danielle 99
police state, US as 132-3
population control 236-8
Posada, Luis 52
Powell, Colin 64-5, 312
Prince, Erik 18

Ratner, Michael 117-18
Reagan, Ronald 92
reconstruction not done by US 71-72
Rice, Condoleezza 6, 19, 111-13, 3 11
right to food, US opposition to 129-30
Rosenberg, Julius and Ethel 224-5
Rumsfeld, Donald 104, 107, 117, 275-6
Russia 35

Saudi Arabia and WikiLeaks 140-41
Scalia, Antonin 70
Scheuer, Michael 44
Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr 273-4
September 11, 2001 attack 148-50
Serbia

US bombing Chinese embassy 34-5
US bombing television station 276
Smith, Sam 295, 298, 316, 338

socialism 219-21, 264-8
Soviet Union 202-5, 215-16
Spain and WikiLeaks 138
Stone, I.F. 338

Sweden, myths about being progressive
133-4, 140

Syria and WikiLeaks 145

Talbot, Phillips 212
terrorists

motivation against US 316
US fighting on same side as 165
Thomas, Helen 31
torture 114-22

United Kingdom and WikiLeaks 142,
144

US soldiers, maltreatment ofby US
government 122-25

Venezuela 20, 112, 141-2, 170-81, 220
Vietnam 21, 317-18
Voight, Jon 68

Wiesel, Elie 94-5
WikiLeaks 99-100, 131-2, 136-45
Woolsey, James 2
World War II 21-2, 202

Zinn, Howard 272-4, 306, 338

'As in the past, in this remarkable colled ion Sill Blum concentrates on
mailers :f great current significance, and does not pull hia punches. They
land, hacked with evidence and acute analysis. It is a perspective on the
world that Westerners should ponder, and take as u guideline for action. '

MO AM CHOMSKY

A brilliant expose of critically important informal o^n a bout the
role gf the US in Ihi world. ... 1 1 tofcii* ihe raw data of international
relations snd presents it so movingly, so compelUngity, and so
insightfully, that when it caches out for us to ael - it has put us
very much in the mood to do so. Succinct and comprehensive,
reasoned and also impassioned, this is a book all should read.'

MICHAEL AI.IJFRT, COFOUHDER OF ZNI;T

'William Blum's Jmenra s Deadliest Expert is another in his
blockbuster series that has applied the reality and morality
principles So work 0 i n U5 foreign poLicy. This hook has vignettes and
Lon gush essays on mailers running Irom conspiracies, ideology,
and the medta to Cuba , Iran, and Wi kiLea ks. It is b rimming w ith
wit usd with bath laughable and Frightening quotations.'

EDWARD S. Hlil! MAN. CD -All ¥ H £] I? OF THE POLITICS OF GENOCIDE

'This book deals with unpleasant subjects yet i! is a pleasure to
road. Blum continues to provide us with convincing critiques of
US global policy in 3 freshly informed and engaging way,'

MICHAEL PARENT!. AUTHOR OF THE FACE OF IMPERIALISM

Coruscating, eye -opening, and essential.'

cththia MCkwhet us presidential candidate

FOR THE GREEN PARTY

'With good cheer and humor Blum guides us toward understanding
that our government does not mean well. Once we've grasped that,
we're far more capable of effectively domg good ourselves.’

DAVID SIMHSQN. AUTHOR OF WAR IS A LIE

[STORM RG]

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Political IriLrir-jTiiJili Rule'..

ms aeons.

a firm Fiy-k

VXi-S-TUH*-UM

F bttNMHO PUM.I5HHG
: r ,"i . j j It^nrvjl I tail it,

H.ilif.1,. '.Winn ;-j Cai <dn

sbn r«' 1 S'. Jib iiuv i

www J*r n HwiW^kifeaipjc *

CW topn rr0 ^lou r n P |i

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Books

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy The Truth About US Foreign Policy and Everything Else Blum, William"

See other formats